Hatton National Bank is scheduled to open the 190th Customer Centre at the Kandy City Centre on 9th (Friday) July 2010. We spoke to Mr Nirosh Perera, Senior Manager, Kandy Customer Centre
Q1 Why are you opening the 190th customer centre in the Kandy City Centre(Any special Reason)?
Yes lots of people ask me the question why do you want to open a customer centre in the Kandy City Centre (KCC )when you have the main customer centre adjoining. The answer to that is we badly felt the need of having an outlet which is open 7 days a week with extended banking hours mainly to cater to the professionals, government and private sector employees who do not have time to come to the bank during normal banking hours and on weekdays. With the opening of the HNB customer centre at KCC we can cater to the financial needs of that customer segment.
In addition to that KCC is becoming very popular shopping mall in the central region and lot of people who are living in the central region patronize KCC now, so we need to have our presence at KCC to cater to the financial needs of our customers who patronize KCC.
Q2 What additional value and benefits will you be able to give customers through this new customer centre?
In addition to the normal services that are provided at other customer centers and extended banking hours/ days, we are going to offer pawning, remittances, and travel related services on all 7 days of the week from 10 AM to 6 PM . Also this will blend well with the priority banking centre that we hope to open soon at our main Kandy customer centre so that all our priority customers will have access to our network all 7 days of the week. Further this customer centre will definitely accrue a number of benefits to our customer centre network in the central region, because most of the people living in the Central Region come to Kandy for their various needs.
Q3 Can you elaborate on HNB s role in the Central Region and in Kandy over the years.
The roots of Hatton National Bank can be traced back to 1888. A Bank named Hatton Bank commenced business in 1888 in Hatton. Therefore we can proudly say that we are one of the oldest banks in the Central Region. When you take the history of Kandy Customer Centre which is situated at a very prominent place in Kandy ( No 1 Dalada Veediya ) started its operations in the year 1892 as National Bank of India and in the year 1970 it became HNB. So once again you can clearly see that we had our presence over a period of more than a century.
Q4 What are your future plans in serving the people of the Central Region/Kandy
The customer centre at KCC is creating history in the history of HNB as the first customer centre which will be open for 7 days of the week. We intend to add all future banking developments to this customer centre as well so that all our customers will have access to all their financial needs under one roof. Also we are planning to roll-out this strategy to other main cities of the region and as the first step we are looking at the possibility of opening our Peradeniya branch on Saturdays. Further, we are planning to start a priority banking unit at the Kandy Customer Centre with all facilities such as share trading, insurance, safety lockers, government securities etc.



