HNB in Hall of Fame of ‘Most Respected’ entities in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s most innovative bank, HNB PLC moved up several notches in the 2019 ranking of the nation’s most respected corporations. The Bank climbed 23 places higher than the previous year to clinch a place in the Hall of Fame of the Most Respected entities in Sri Lanka. Assuming the 11th place in the annual LMD-Nielsen business index, HNB continues to garner wide respect in financial performance, quality consciousness, walking the talk and management profiling, honesty, innovation and dynamism and corporate culture, which the rankings are based on.

The fifteenth annual edition of the Most Respected ranks the nations’ most admired corporations and this year’s edition adopted a revised methodology to gauge peer perceptions, based on a weighted ranking system. HNB has been a central actor in Sri Lanka’s most admired companies and admired as leading from the front ever since the rankings commenced in 2004.

HNB Managing Director and Chief Executive Jonathan Alles said: “Recognition as a leader among LMD’s Most Respected entities stands as a further validation of the bank’s approach to business, stability and success. HNB remains unwavering in its commitment to drive transformational change and be a partner to the progress of many more Sri Lankans and to be a key contributor to Sri Lanka’s growth potential.”“It is a privilege to be recognised by peers in the industry and a true honour for HNB to have received such an acclaim on a prestigious platform. I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the entire Hatna Family for their unwavering commitment and support in executing our vision of a digitally vibrant, customer-centric, future-ready bank,” Alles went on to note.

HNB has undergone a remarkable transformation, firstly with substantial investments towards a comprehensive digitisation and automation process of key back-office functions, followed by the establishment of centralised debt collection and document processing.Similarly, the bank also works to introduce its SME customer base – which is among the largest in Sri Lanka – to digital, online and mobile payment solutions, in addition to Enterprise Resource Planning and business intelligence enabled by analytics, which when combined with the bank’s extensive partner and social networks, is leading to a grassroots economic rejuvenation across Sri Lanka.

Over the past year, HNB has received continuous praise for its pioneering initiatives across the entire spectrum of its operations. Notably, over the recent past, HNB was adjudged ‘Best Managed Bank in Sri Lanka’ by the prestigious Asian Banker Magazine while the Bank’s Managing Director/CEO Jonathan Alles was also conferred with Asian Banker ‘CEO Leadership Achievement’ award – both of which are only given out every three years.Similarly, HNB was also declared ‘Sri Lanka’s Best Bank’ for 2019 by Euromoney  Magazine for the third time, in addition to being ranked among Sri Lankan banks in its ranking among the Global Top 1000 Banks by the prestigious UK-based Banker Magazine, further strengthening its status as Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent private sector bank. HNB’s remarkable track record of excellence secured it a first place ranking ahead of all Sri Lankan banks included in the LMD Top 100 Club – a position which was evaluated based on its performance over the past 25 years. Operating through 250 customer centres across the country, HNB is one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most innovative banks, having won recognition from numerous international and local institutions for its achievement of excellence in diverse fields. HNB was also the first Sri Lankan bank to obtain an international credit rating and was assigned a foreign currency issuer rating of B1 on par with the sovereign rating by Moody’s Investors Service, while it has a national long term rating of AA- (lka) by Fitch Ratings (Lanka) Ltd.