ComBank wins National Quality Award

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon was recently honoured by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI) with the National Quality Award – the highest award presented in the country to recognise performance excellence in quality.

Commercial Bank is the only bank in the country to be bestowed this prestigious award, the bank said in a media release.

The bank won this award in the Service sector under the ‘Large Scale Business’ category for excellence in quality management and quality achievement at the annual awards programme organised by SLSI.

The award affirms Commercial Bank as a role model organisation of Sri Lanka. Winners are evaluated on seven criteria based on the world-renowned Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award of the USA. These include Leadership, Strategic planning, Customer focus, Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge management, Workforce focus, Processes management, and Results.

The process of assessment for the awards included individual evaluations, consensus evaluations, and site visits to ensure organisations are aligned to the aspects of benchmarked performance excellence. Thereafter, based on the recommendation of the review committee, a panel of judges selected the final winners.

While the bank’s strategic planning included engaging an external consultant in 2019 – McKinsey & Company, a worldrenowned consultancy firm – to support the bank in visualising the future banking industry, the progressing trends and competitor space, elements such as budgeting, responses to the pandemic, situational analysis and innovation were also taken into consideration.

The bank’s customer focus measures recognised for the award encompassed listening to customers, expanding customer touch points and communication channels, and developing products to suit each customer segment. Commercial Bank’s efforts in measurement, analysis, and improvement parameters for organisational performance, information and knowledge management systems, organisational learning models and best practices were also assessed.

Under workforce focus, the bank demonstrated its recruitment, training, and inclusive decision-making practices at all levels, its workforce benefits and policies, tools to measure workforce engagement, and practices regarding performance management and development.