LankaClear enhances service to banks

* Cheque deposit cut off times extended until 7.00 p.m. from 1 April

* National clearing house marks another successful year in 2010

LankaClear, the National Clearing House of Sri Lanka has continuously enhanced the Cheque Clearing System (Cheque Image and Truncation System (CITS)) to meet the market growth and to create greater efficiency in order to better serve the public.

In order to achieve this, the IT Infrastructure was upgraded to cutting edge technology and enhancements were made to the software systems. As a result LankaClear is able to extend the submission time to 7:00 p.m. and thus facilitating the Banks to extend their cheque deposit cutoff times. This will be effective starting 1 April 2011.

Also the settlement clearing cycle has been enhanced, and thus cheque return data is provided to the banks by 1:30 p.m. enabling them to release funds to their customers within the banking hours on T+1. This efficiency improvement was made possible by the data transmission for the settlement clearing cycle being online and with digital signatures for greater security and this went live on 14 Mar 2011. Further to these benefits to the end customer, the Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities have been greatly improved creating a more reliable cheque clearing system.

Another notable achievement was the launch of the Enhanced SLIPS (Sri Lanka Interbank Payment System) System in September 2010. This is the first paperless, online and highly secured retail clearing system that connects all Commercial Banks via the LankaClear VPN with end to end digital signing. The enhanced SLIPS system was primarily implemented to cater for higher volumes that are expected due to rapid economic growth and to facilitate same day clearing (T+0) and thus enabling customers to get good value for fund transfers on the same day.

There has been good growth in SLIPS transaction volumes and around 18% annual growth was observed in 2010. Also, with the introduction of same day clearing (T+0), it has been observed that the third party customer transfer volumes have increased.

LankaSign, the first financial sector Certificate Service Provider (CSP) operated and managed by LankaClear launched two new products in February 2011. They are the Email/Document Signing Certificates and SSL Server Certificates. LankaClear believes that with the introduction of these two new products greater security for financial transaction can be achieved and move towards a Greener environment.

The above improvements to the clearing systems were made to enhance the capacity of payments industry in Sri Lanka to serve all sectors of the economy to support the higher growth path of post-war Sri Lanka.