Hatton National Bank demonstrated resilience with robust retail financial performance

• Hatton National Bank’s retail business contributed to almost half of its total income
• The bank’s upgraded payment app, SOLO 2.0 recorded $2.5 million transaction value
• The bank leveraged process and technology with its all-new core banking system

Singapore, 26 May 2022 – Hatton National Bank (HNB) was recognised as the best retail bank in Sri Lanka at the Excellence in Retail Financial Services Programme 2022 by The Asian Banker.

Hatton National Bank’s retail business contributed to almost half of its total income

HNB continued to demonstrate resilience amidst volatile conditions with solid financial performance. The bank recorded a retail return on equity (ROE) of 14.33% which is higher than Commercial Bank of Ceylon. The bank also managed to improve its retail cost-to-income ratio (CIR) at 35% which is also better than Commercial Bank of Ceylon. HNB recorded a retail net operating profit of $69 million (LKR 24.7 billion) largely due to healthy growth in loan book and improved fee income through cards, trade, and loan disbursements. Strong checking account and savings account (CASA) and deposit mobilisation efforts yielded deposit growth of 12% YoY.

SOLO 2.0 recorded $2.5 million transaction value

HNB Solo, the bank’s payment app has been upgraded and rebranded as SOLO 2.0. The payment app emerged as a highly sought-after payment solution as customers and merchants can easily navigate the contactless transactions scenario in light with the government policy of promoting contactless payments and mitigate health risks.  SOLO 2.0 recorded more than 125,000 users in 2021 with transaction value of $2.5 million (LKR750 million) and transaction count of 625,000. The bank also launched its brand new HNB digital banking App which recorded 250,000 users in 2021. The total transactions volume which includes fund transfers stood at 800,000 with a transaction value of $151 million (LKR45 billion).

Meanwhile, Commercial bank of Ceylon has also launched a digital platform that provides customers to pay for government dues such as tax payments, ports authority payments, and utility bill payments.

The bank leveraged process and technology with its all-new core banking system

In 2021, HNB implemented an all-new core banking solution, Finacle 10X. It enables the bank to process various tasks and update databases based on the kind of operations performed.  The bank also implemented loan origination system with scoring to assist retail underwriting. New analytics and business intelligence (BI) visualization toll was introduced to improve retail analytics functions.The bank also launched robotic process automation (RPA) for the retail business and automated chatbots as well as visual assistants on the websites the same year. The RPA covers centralized retail operations and trade services, credit card bin balancing, atm reimbursement, easy payment plan conversion, credit card short messaging service (SMS) alert registration, society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunications (SWIFT) message extraction and document uploads for trade workflows.

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The Asian Banker is the region’s most authoritative provider of strategic business intelligence to the financial services community. The global research company has offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Manila, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Dubai, as well as representatives in London, New York, and San Francisco. It has a business model that revolves around three core business lines: publications, research services and forums. Visit the company website at www.theasianbanker.com

You may visit the Excellence in Retail Financial Services page at http://awards.asianbankerforums.com/retailfinancial/

To view the respective evaluation criteria, click here: https://awards.asianbankerforums.com/retailfinancial/criteria-country

For further information, you may get in touch with:

Chris Kapfer

Research Director

M: (+63) 94 3283 6015 

ckapfer@theasianbanker.com