New BOC chairman settles down; looking at enhancing its efficiency, systems

Newly appointed Chairman of the Bank of Ceylon Ronald C. Perera is no stranger to the bank as he had been a director of the same institution on a previous occasion. The Sunday Times Business desk recently interviewed him at his office.

Mr. Perera said the Bank of Ceylon is one of the oldest and the largest banks in Sri Lanka and is fully government owned.

“Currently it is the largest bank in Sri Lanka with a strength of 8600 employees and with 568 branches in the country and four overseas branches in England, India, the Maldives and Seychelles”. He said the bank has an asset base of Rs. 1.2 trillion (Rs. 1200 billion), the largest asset base of banks in Sri Lanka.

“Because of the large asset base we can justly say that we are the bankers to the nation. Our gross profit last year was Rs. 20 billion and we beat other banks with several billions of rupees. Ours is the only state bank listed in the 1000 top bracket of banks in the world,” he said.

Referring to the staff, he said the greater majority of the employees including the General Manager downwards are people with professional qualifications, in banking, or accountancy or graduates with academic qualifications. He said the last batch of 200 graduate management trainees that were recruited had first class or upper second class degrees and some had professional qualification such as CIMA or other accountancy qualifications. ” All of them are competent and fluent in both Sinhala and English languages who are destined be our future business leaders.” Asked whether he proposed to bring any changes to the bank, he said he assumed duties as its Chairman last week and needs a little bit of time to do an indepth study of the bank.

He said the previous board of directors of the bank had consulted a company named BCG ( Boston Consulting Group) to streamline the banking procedures and to study other aspects of management practices. “I am due to meet them shortly so that they could brief me on the subject. The bank’s corporate management has already briefed me on the BCG role.”

He said BCG is a US company but it was its Indian arm that was overseeing the bank streamlining process.

“BCG was not engaged by any other bank in Sri Lanka and we were the first to engage them. We found their proposals radical enough for us to maintain the number one position slot and also for us to grow in the fu- ture. It is more difficult to maintain the number one slot than being the number two.” He said the outstation branches had adequate staff but the bank strength of 12,000 employees has been scaled back to 8600 over the years. Information Technology, computerisation and new procedures have contributed to his. “Although we don’t retrench staff, we do not recruit to replace staff when they retire.”

He said new banking practices such as Internet and mobile banking are being used to reduce the number of times people visit banks.

Referring to loans to entrepreneur, he said steps will be taken to cut down the time in approving such loans. Business loans perhaps could take longer but still can be expedited. Even the procedure involved in obtaining a simple housing loan can be streamlined provided facts furnished were correct.

The Chairman said the bank’s board of directors has not yet being appointed so far.

“Altogether there are six board members including myself. One of them will be a representative from the Treasury according to statute. However the day to day running of the bank is done by its General Manager. “All bank employees have many fringe benefits such as medical expenses met by the bank and a pension after retirement. The new chairman is President’s Counsel and becomes the 24th head of the bank. He is a LLB graduate from the University of Colombo and holds a LLM in international Trade Law. He was a director of the Bank of Ceylon on a previous occasion.