“Sri Lanka is over banked… A round of consolidation is overdue,” says Chief Executive Officer of Singapore-based Financial Insights, Cyrus Daruwala. He was keynote speaker at the inaugural Hitachi Data Systems Financial Services Industry Summit held in Colombo recently for senior executives of financial services industries from around the ASEAN region.
Referring to the global economic downturn, he noted that the “worst is behind us”, further indicating that countries like Vietnam, China, India, Thailand and Indonesia, which encompassed half the world’s population, were already showing signs of a turn around. He added that even though sectors like banking, food and healthcare had not shrunk, people were still being cautious.
Meanwhile, the message from Hitachi Data Systems ASEAN Vice President & General Manager, Ravi Rajendran, was that potential customers who gave his team a mandate to come in and fully understand their business would see returns that more than exceed expectations. Claims apparently backed up by his company's track record across the ASEAN region during a ‘tough’ six months, during which they had apparently earned record revenues, again according to Mr. Rajendran.
In fact, Mr. Rajendran also indicates that his company experienced a doubling of growth over the last three years, particularly due to triple digit growth from emerging markets such as Vietnam; resulting from a strong and loyal base, acquisition of new customers and fast growth for enterprise solutions and storage requirements in the banking, telecommunications and healthcare segments. Commenting on his company's entry into the Sri Lankan market, Mr. Rajendran indicated that while his company will be starting from zero, he sees high, untapped potential in the telecommunications, financial and healthcare sectors and that the timing was right for his entry.
Mr. Rajendran's Sri Lankan operations are 'enabled' by Just In Time Holdings, a Sri Lankan company responsible for large-scale projects such as the operation of 250 People's Bank ATM's, the introduction of scrip-less trading at the Colombo Stock Exchange and the Internet Protocol TV technology used by PEO TV. Another area promoted by Just In Time Holdings is electronic banking through a partnership with Gemalto which endeavours to reduce risk by enhancing security through EMV, the ‘global standard for credit and debit payment cards based on chip card technology’. |
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