Opinion: Envisioning the Future of Digital Banking

Seylan Bank’s CIO discusses the upcoming changes in embracing the digital era As digitalization grows at a very fast pace, technology is redefining the way we live, the way we work and the lifestyle we lead. As technology evolves, banks need to actively work towards integrating new technologies to serve customers better.

Today, innovation and technology have become game changers in revolutionizing the landscape of the financial industry where banks are compelled to evolve to sustain their growth in the modern world. Harsha Wanigatunga, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Seylan Bank said “Seylan Bank is a fast evolving bank and thus we are always on top of the technology in this digital era in multiple ways to serve our valued customers better. Towards this end, our focus has always been to offer innovative banking solutions, where the user experience is great and highest level of security is ensured. Given this the Bank continues to focus on the key pillars of customer convenience, security, innovative technology and process optimization to offer an unparalleled digital banking experience to our customers.

With our digital transformation, we are not only looking at providing financial solutions digitally but also fulfilling the needs and aspirations of our customers as well.” Elaborating on customer convenience, Harsha noted, “Seylan Bank is continuously working on improving its backend and customer touch points to offer a frictionless, convenient and secure banking experience. Our IT team consists of highly competent industry experts who have been in the financial industry and are focused on developing innovative solutions that will further improve our customers’ User Experience (UX) and e-banking platforms to offer customers a rich and convenient digital banking.

” Commenting on the security aspect, Harsha added “We have made a significant investment to design and implement state of the art security systems to ensure that our digital platforms are exceptionally safe and reliable, so our customers can transact with peace of mind.  As an example, towards offering highly secure digital banking solutions, our ATM’s and POS terminals are EMV certified and we have adopted global best practices to ensure the highest level of security standards. We are also, pleased to announce that Seylan Bank was the first bank in Sri Lanka to go-live with the LankaPay EMV certification. Therefore customers of any bank can utilize any of Seylan Bank’s ATMs to carry out their day to day transactions with zero concern”. Harsha continued that “our payment systems comply with Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA DSS) and our infrastructure is PCI - DSS aligned. Staying relevant and up to date with modern security requirements is a challenging process, and it requires continuous research and development to adopt new approaches and technology to keep abreast with the modern threats. It is in this backdrop that we have invested and deployed state of the art security architectures to ensure highest levels of security and to deliver cutting edge digital services. The Bank is committed to provide state of the art technology and superior experience to our customers continually.” Whilst discussing Mobile Banking, Harsha stated that “Mobile banking is the future and a significant focus will be given to mobile banking as it has become a game changer in the banking industry by providing banking in your palm. We have aligned our services with digital banking to offer efficient banking facilities at a single touch to our customers. While we continue to have SMS banking for our customers that don’t use smartphones, we strongly believe that the future of banking heavily relies on smartphones and we are optimizing our mobile platforms towards this end.  However for customers who are more comfortable in working on larger screens we offer a state of the art Internet Banking facility, where ease of use, security and offerings are continuously being enhanced. Therefore, we have leveraged our digital banking products and services to transform the digital banking ecosystem to a whole new paradigm.” Commenting on the overall value of technology and how it empowers the staff of the organization, Harsha in his closing statement said “From Leadership planning to customer convenience, our plans are developed in a way that technology becomes the core enabler across all pillars of Seylan Bank’s strategy. Driving this growth, we are able to empower our employees with modern technology and enable them to deliver a more unique experience to our customers in every single way.”