Bank of Ceylon offers fresh banking experience
Moving beyond traditional banking, Sri Lanka’s Bank of Ceylon has introduced a range of innovative products and services with a view to strengthen national economy while offering the public a new banking experience.
With over 83 years in operations, Bank of Ceylon has given a significant contribution towards the country’s socioeconomic development progress. In the mean time, it led the banking sector with innovative products and service offerings by keeping up the pace with evolving customer requirements and technological advancements.
With an objective to provide some relief from current difficulties faced by Sri Lankan entrepreneurs in taking their businesses to the next stage, the Bank of Ceylon established the first of its kind SME Circle at the first floor of the Bank’s Head Office.
This offers a gamut of services with tailor-made financial solutions including special loan schemes to close funding gaps entrepreneurs come across, apart from providing traditional banking products by realistically understanding their needs.
Even under the prevailing difficult conditions the bank is pleased that it could assist a considerable number of entrepreneurs through this initiative over past few months to overcome acute financial difficulties and stabilize business operations. With the success the bank is experiencing with this initiative the Bank plans to move ahead to setup similar service centers across the country to widen the service “SME Circle” offers to deserving entrepreneurs.
The comprehensive green loan package is considered to be one of the timely and critical initiative which has the potential to extend relief to individuals and businesses while benefiting environment and society at large.
Introduced aiming at encouraging renewable energy and sustainable development, this initiative will also assist to reduce foreign exchange outflows from the country spent on fossil based fuels with the anticipated shift towards locally generated renewable energy. The bio-gas loan facility could potentially encourage the public to take initiatives to reduce waste materials in households through generating bio-gas and organic fertilizer for household use that could also lead to somewhat relief to reduce cost of living.
The Green loan package also covers a special loan scheme for the Grid-connected solar power suppliers to purchase required inventor to store the generated solar power.
The Bank of Ceylon has taken up a challenging task to develop remote villages in selected number of underprivileged, rural outskirts in the country. Under the initiative, Bank of Ceylon plans to enhance financial literary and livelihood in these localities.
Under this ‘BOC Gammana’ concept, Bank of Ceylon aims elevate the living standards of the people in these rural areas by encouraging the residents to take up self-employments or other income generating activities, and the Bank will be providing loan facilities to fund for these activities.
The Bank looks forward to form BOC Mithuru groups and conduct special awareness programs to begin with in order to build required knowledge in managing their finances and small scale businesses. With the basic knowledge the Bank will facilitate a mutually guaranteed lending package for these groups.