Ramping up efforts to encourage a flourishing savings habits among young Sri Lankans, premier retail bank, HNB PLC, celebrated the opening of a fully revamped Student Savings Unit at the most respected public school in the island, Royal College, Colombo.
The new unit was declared open during a special ceremony at the school with the participation of Royal College Principal, B. A. Abeyrathna, together with HNB Deputy General Manager – Retail and SME Banking, Sanjay Wijemanne, Royal College Senior Deputy Principal, V. S Gunathilake, Royal College Deputy Principal– Academics, Krishantha Silva, Royal College Assistant Principal- Primary, Yugantha Liyange, Royal College, Student Development Society – Secretary, Asanga Peiris, Royal College Union – Secretary, Mithila Mendis, teachers, parents and students.
“We are pleased and grateful to celebrate this important milestone with the opening of a brand-new HNB Student Savings Unit. With HNB’s assistance, we will now be able to give students a powerful head start on essential skills needed to flourish in life, such as being financially responsible and developing a savings habit while gaining familiarity with new technologies that will be foundational for greater success in future,” Royal College, Principal, B.A. Abeyrathna stated.
Notably, Student savings units were first introduced to the Sri Lankan banking landscape at Royal College by HNB in 1994. Since then, the Bank has expanded its service to cover 162 Students Savings Units across Sri Lanka. Through the units, student managers are groomed to take leadership in running a mini bank in school and get actively involved in promoting the savings habit among fellow students. The bank trains over 1,000 students annually in this capacity. of student managers and interns. The bank fully refurbished and reopened the student savings unit of the school recently to facilitate HNB’s latest technological advancements and banking innovations. Over the years, HNB has been the key banking partner of a number of prominent events organized by Royal College.
“It is truly an honour for myself and all of my fellow Royal College old boys to have launched our state-of-the-art HNB Student Savings Unit. With continuous digitalization, the future of banking and finance is changing at an increasingly rapid pace. Through these units, we are able to give our future leaders here at Royal an early, in-depth, first- hand experience of these systems. In this manner, we hope to give each of them a firm foundation for financial success throughout their life,” HNB Deputy General Manager – Retail and SME Banking, Sanjay Wijemanne stated.
The Student Development Society (SDS) of the College has continued to support the bank in revamping and developing the HNB Student unit at the school premises. Additionally, the unit will be managed by the HNB Kollupitiya Customer Centre.
With 252 customer centres across the country, HNB is one of Sri Lanka’s largest, most technologically innovative banks having won local and global recognition for its efforts to drive forward a new paradigm in digital banking. The bank has continuously won prestigious accolades including being declared Best Retail Bank in Sri Lanka for 2020 by the Asian Banker Magazine for the eleventh occasion in addition to being highest ranked privately-owned commercial bank in Sri Lanka by the prestigious Banker Magazine Top 1000 global rankings 2020.Locally, HNB leads the Business Today Top 10 rankings and also claimed seven awards at the Best Corporate Citizen Sustainability Awards 2019. The first Sri Lankan bank to obtain an international credit rating, HNB is rated on par with the sovereign by Moody’s Investors Service, and the national long term rating of HNB was revised upward by two notches to AA+ (lka) recently by Fitch Ratings (Lanka) Ltd.