Bank of Ceylon's re-organisation

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, NOV. 13. The 60-year-old Bank of Ceylon has temporarily put on hold its branch expansion plan in India. This is a sequel to a major re-organisation exercise it has currently undertaken back home. Bank of Ceylon has a lone Indian branch in Chennai which has just completed five years of operations. The bank has the permission of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to set up couple of more branches in the country.

The Chairperson of Bank of Ceylon, Mrs. Dayani de Silva, however, said re-organisation was on top of the agenda at the moment for the bank. The branch expansion in India would have to wait a while, she hinted.

Mrs. Dayani de Silva was here in connection with the fifth anniversary of bank's branch in Chennai. In a chat with this correspondent here on Saturday last, Mrs. Dayani de Silva, who will return to Sri Lanka Administrative Service shortly, said the bank had sought the help of well-known global consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to help it draw up a revamp plan for the bank. The PwC team, comprising members from India and Sri Lanka, had already submitted its recommendations to the bank, she pointed out.

The PwC exercise encompassed a host of issues ranging from re- orienting the organisational and management structures to putting in place new business strategies and inducting state-of-the-art technologies. The objective of the exercise, she explained, was to help the bank align itself to the emerging environment which was witnessing fierce competition from within and without.

The PwC exercise, she said, also went into the question of preparing a human resources development (HRD) plan to face the emerging new regime with focus firmly fixed on devising mechanisms to improve productivity, efficiency and performance of the staff. In this context, she hinted that a VRS (voluntary retirement scheme) akin to the one mooted in the Indian banking context was quite unavoidable in Bank of Ceylon.

Mrs. Dayani de Silva, said the bank would go to the consultant yet again ``to take their recommendations further forward.'' Quizzed on the specifics of PwC recommendations, she said the consultant had suggested branch network rationalisation on the basis of businesses rather than geographical locations. The PwC also had recommended branch network rationalisation on the basis of clients, that is, corporates, retail and what not.

The fulcrum of the whole exercise would revolve around information technology, she felt. The bank was acutely aware of the need to ``enhance technology and integrate the banking system,'' she added. The technological revolution that was sweeping the globe would make the already `empowered customers' more demanding, she felt. Mrs. Dayani de Silva said the bank had solicited the help of Ernst and Young to make it IT-savvy. Ernst and Young had already helped the bank in addressing the Y2K problem, she pointed out.

``We are getting ready to enter the performance related culture,'' she quipped and pointed to the establishment of a restructuring cell within the bank to facilitate smoother change- over. The bank, she said, would induct from overseas a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) who would focus on risk management, information technology and MIS (management information system). To a question, the chairperson said the re-organisation exercise would be completed in the next two-and-a-half years.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Business
Previous : SEBI panel moots buyer to disclose holdings at
           three levels
Next     : Sops sought for textile machinery units