Financing empowerment: HNB bolsters support for Sri Lanka’s most enterprising female artisans

Sri Lanka’s most diversified financial services conglomerate, HNB PLC, celebrated International Women’s Day by providing microfinance loans coupled with a grant component in support of improved livelihoods for 15 Sri Lankan women artisans as part of a program to empower 250 plus artisans across the country including the Northern Province. 

During a special ceremony to felicitate all 15 artisans, HNB Managing Director/CEO Jonathan Alles reiterated the Bank’s firm commitment to enhancing female labour force participation and entrepreneurship – particularly in the MSME sector - by bolstering access to finance.

“The World Bank has estimated that Sri Lanka could increase its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by as much as $ 20 billion each year up to 2025, simply by advancing the cause of gender equality. This means that our collective mission to establish a society and economy that provides equal opportunities for all its citizens, regardless of gender is not just an ethical imperative, it is also essential for economic development. 

We take this opportunity to congratulate our grant recipients on the success they have achieved up to now, and look forward to working with them in order to scale up their businesses, that will in turn, generate greater opportunities at the grassroots of the Sri Lankan economy,” he stated.

Financial inclusion for low-income households in the developing world has the power to propel the economic and social development of the country as well as alleviate the ill effects of poverty. HNB, as Sri Lanka’s leading microfinance institution, plays a key role in ensuring access to formal financial services for Sri Lanka’s low-income population of Sri Lanka and microenterprises. 

HNB is a resolute advocate for the empowerment of women-led enterprises and communities, enabling them to overcome socio-cultural and economic challenges through access to finance, as well as extensive technical advisory services and training, in order to build capacity, financial literacy and enhance marketability. 

Each grant from HNB will allow its recipients to digitise their processes, scale up their working space, and also contribute towards working capital requirements; through financial inclusion, increasing their capacity to both, provide for their families, in addition to serving as valuable contributors to the country’s economy. 

While 15 local artisans received these grants at the event, 250 more are in the pipeline for this project; as part of the long-term goal of fostering growth and wealth creation in Sri Lanka’s home-grown economy. 

One of the many issues plaguing the microfinance sector landscape in Sri Lanka however, is that recipients often do not optimise the benefits of microfinance, therefore microfinance that ought to be a means of financial support could end up becoming a burden. 

To make recipients better leverage microfinance support, HNB is creating a more enabling environment by empowering individuals, especially women, to strengthen skills, business sustainability, livelihoods, and income-generation capacities. 

“Microfinance has proven to be an effective vehicle for poverty eradication, but I firmly believe that it also plays a crucial role in improving individual capabilities, vision, and agency, when applied for grassroots development,” commented HNB Managing Director/CEO Jonathan Alles.

“We at HNB have a long history of predominantly serving in the SME and microfinance space, and we take great pride in collaborating with various like-minded organisations to promote grassroots level businesses, entrepreneurship, and inclusivity, by doing what we do best.” 

He added: “If women in particular are empowered to engage in sustainable livelihoods, provided with equal access to finance and productive resources, then their local communities have the capacity to thrive, in turn resulting in regional growth and inclusive national prosperity.” 

Given the Bank’s expertise in managing one of the largest private sector MSME portfolios in Sri Lanka for several decades, HNB has been a key stakeholder in the evolution of microfinance, with extensive expertise and a comprehensive understanding of how microfinance can be designed to efficiently serve its beneficiaries. This has enabled HNB to play its role as a key enabler of grassroots-led economic revival, to catalyse meaningful reform to work better for recipients, for microfinance to truly support especially women headed MSME’s.