Business Line Reviews

The Retail Banking segment of BoC represents a significant share of the market, and 36% of the Bank’s total credit. With over 2,000 customer touch points, it also represents one of the primary channels through which the Bank interfaces with and serves its customers. For detailed information on how the Bank delivers value to its diverse customer base, refer Customers.

Operating Context

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Country’s economic crisis that followed, the retail segment was severely impacted by a challenging operating environment and stringent regulatory controls. As the systemically important leading state bank, BoC’s focus in 2022 was on supporting the survival of the Country’s economy, businesses, and communities.

In light of the challenging operating environment and risks to the stability of the financial sector, the Bank’s Retail segment worked to rationalise the targets, and focus towards supporting businesses and individual customers.

Influence of the Operating Environment

Deposits

The Retail segment’s deposit base showed impressive performance in 2022 despite the severely challenging circumstances. Time deposits grew by 29% and total deposits grew by 20%. Success of deposits reflects the depth of trust placed in the Bank, strength of the Bank’s investment promise, and continuous proactive engagement by the Bank to pioneer a number of new products in response to a changing environment, and rapid fluctuations in interest and exchange rates.

CASA ratio of 34% reflected the challenging business environment faced by SMEs, entrepreneurs, and personal customers during the year.

New Deposit Products Introduced during the Year

 

Products Relaunched during the Year

Loans and Advances

The Bank’s retail lending portfolio was severely hampered by depressed economic conditions, regulatory measures, controls for liquidity and capital adequacy, and more stringent provision requirements. However, despite challenges, the Bank found proactive and responsive methods to overcome challenges.

During the year, the Bank piloted dedicated leasing facilities for Green Finance aimed at specific segments to purchase electric vehicles.

The Bank’s Green Loans drew notable interest in 2022 with the economic crisis affecting energy prices and fuel availability. Loan schemes linked to environmental-friendly, and renewable energy technologies such as electric bikes, bio-gas, and solar were continued during the year, with the Green Loan portfolio reaching to LKR 1,964.9 million by the end of the year.

Throughout the year, the Bank continued to support SMEs and entrepreneurs, providing much needed credit to crisis-stricken customers. New initiatives to support SMEs, such as the Bank of Ceylon SME Circle, and existing loan schemes such as Divi Udana and BoC Mithuru resulted in credit facilities amounting to LKR 1,478 million (growth of 88%) extended to SMEs and MSMEs in 2022.

New Lending Products Introduced during the Year

Transactional Banking

Continuing an increasing trend towards greater digitalisation and digital adoption alongside improved customer convenience, the debit card and credit card transaction volumes recorded a growth of 25%, with value of transactions growing by 27% in 2022. The Bank’s Internet Payment Gateway (IPG) also identified greater adoption, closing the year with 126 vendors. This resulted in a 38% increase in volume of transactions and an almost 100% increase in the value of transactions facilitated through the Bank’s IPG. Further, market penetration of the Bank’s Point of Sale (PoS) machines continued to show steady growth during the year, amounting to 8,967 PoS machines by the end of 2022.

Growing success of Transactional Banking is part of the Bank’s continuous journey towards greater digitalisation, and a direct result of concerted engagement with a number of partners. For more information on the Bank’s engagement with Business Partners, refer Business Partners.

Launched Affinity Card for State Sector employees.

New Process Improvements during the Year

Debt Moratoria and Concessionary Support

Bank of Ceylon has always stood with its customers, displaying deep commitment to Country and community. This was never more evident than in 2022, when the Bank took a strategic decision to focus on supporting customers and businesses to survive and revive in the face of challenging economic conditions. The Bank prioritised the recovery and revival during the year; by extending moratoria, providing repayment holidays, restructuring facilities, and ensuring access to working capital to enable business revival.

By the end of December 2022, 2% of the Retail Banking portfolio was under moratorium. This is compared to 5% as at December 2021.

An unexpected increase in interest rates negatively affected personal loan customers who obtained credit on variable rates. Despite facing monumental increases to funding costs, the Bank provided preferential interest rates to mitigate the pressure on such customers. At the same time, the Bank honoured credit granted at fixed rates, despite the increase to funding costs. For more information on the Bank’s concessionary support to customers and the success of its business revival efforts, refer Customers.

Portfolio Quality

Despite efforts to establish proactive controls and measures against deterioration of asset quality, impact on portfolio quality across the sector was significant.

As in the previous year, the Bank’s focus in 2022 revolved around business revival and long-term sustainability of customers. Refer Customers for more information on the Bank’s initiatives and controls against deterioration of asset quality.