Abans Finance on a journey of digital transformation

From left: Dinusha Megasooriya, Rashmika Nissanga, Aruna Somasiri, Anura Fernando, CEO Roshan Nanayakkara, Head of IT Gayan Wicramasinghe, Kamal Channana, Chaminda Sugathadasa, Shreyans Pathak and Kasun Dhananjaya

Abans Finance PLC, a fully-owned subsidiary of the prestigious Abans Group recently won many accolades for projects undertaken and successfully completed under its digital transformation drive. The company which was established in 2006, took a major leap in its digital transformation journey during the years 2017/2018 in keeping with the evolving global trends of the digital age, while the company also launched some innovative products. 

Abans Finance’s Head of IT Gayan Wickramasinghe was recently recognised with the Digital Maestro Award for outstanding work done by Chief Information Officers and IT leaders in Sri Lankan enterprises to bring about true digital-led transformation and innovation within their organisations. Organised by DynamicCIO at the Sri Lanka Digital Dialogue 2018 summit in Colombo on 14 September, the award recognised individuals for successfully leading the organisation’s digital journey from the front.

Speaking on this achievement Wickremasinghe said: “Abans Finance has taken strategic initiatives since the commencement of this year to transform all aspects of our business operations to digital frameworks. Our aim is to not only streamline our internal processes but to also benefit our end customers by offering state-of-the-art solutions for their financial needs.”

In line with these aspirations, the company recently launched AFiMOBILE, a mobile application for lending and collections. This is a pioneering mobile application for marketing officers and recovery officers, with the objective of initiating a lease or a personal loan and improving the recovery process in the field. The new-age app also allows users to keep track of progress of a lease or personal loan in its approval stages, and also keeps tab on collections and defaulting of payments. 

The recently launched app has helped cut down lead times and streamline the workflow originating at the point of onboarding a customer to the point of activating the facility. With the use of geo-tags for locating the customers, the recovery and collection processes too have improved drastically.

Furthermore, Abans Finance also migrated to new internal systems during the year. A new core information system ‘SkyBank’ is currently being integrated module by module covering the range of services offered by the company. Upon completion the system will also include features such as a digital banking front-end for customers. AFPLC hopes to extend online services with a digital banking frontend to its customers in the future.

The company is now leveraging on improved collection of sales and collections data, with the use of a powerful business intelligence tool and presenting actionable information to help executives, managers and other corporate end users make informed business decisions.

Keeping with the paperless trends of the business environment, Abans Finance also integrated a new solution to track, manage and store documents thereby reducing the paper-trail. An added disaster recovery site linked with the document storage ensures that customer data is secured even in the event of a large scale disaster such as fire, flood, and earthquake at the primary data centre.

Abans Finance has also launched its own cloud-based intranet for internal staff usage, while migrating staff email backups to the cloud frame as well. The new intranet also serves as a collaboration point for staff spread across the company’s branch network. In order to access the intranet the VPN links with branches was also upgraded.

To ensure the stable continuity of the new digital transformation, Abans Finance has also upgraded its information systems security policy and set up a business continuity plan for the digital shift.