HNB’s transformative journey: Courage to change, challenge and be different

‘Oh fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

Fly and never tire,

There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land’

– An African American Spiritual, (Obama, 2020)

Shaping the arc of an elegant cruise ship requires carefully chartered navigation. Transforming a 132-year-old bank with a deep-rooted culture encompasses vision and passion blended with compassion. HNB’s journey to the promised land, to be a digital and future ready bank is a story that bears all these three facets; vision, passion and compassion. 

Courage to change, challenge and be different is a time-tested value espoused by Hatton National Bank and forms part of its corporate values. It is ingrained to the DNA of the bank and its people. 

We prepared for the arrival of 2020 with much anticipation, a few years ago. We changed many fundamentals in our business model and service ethos, to make banking enjoyable. HNB was a pioneering local bank which took bold strides into centralisation as early as 2003, with trade centralisation obtaining ISO 9001 certification in 2004 for its successful implementation. Thereon, the bank saw rapid acceleration of centralising operations, followed by retail credit, collections, recoveries, credit operations, credit administration and security repository, setting up centralised hubs for each of these areas. 

In 2013 we embarked on yet another first, setting up a Process Improvement and Change Management Department in the bank. This vertical was responsible for the introducing lean, six sigma and business process re-engineering of age-old processes handed down over generations, gotten quite unwieldy and inefficient over the years. Once the centralised hubs were set up, they were fitted will the right levels of skill, with the strategic intention of freeing up the branch network to engage in higher quality human to human (H2H) interactions with existing and potential customers. 

Project Everest, HNB’s bold transformation program, commenced in 2018, with a three-year timeline to drive digital, product, service, people and culture transformation through a bank-wide roll out. Year 2020 saw the culmination of most of the tech, digital, process and people transformation efforts in the bank despite COVID disruptions. There were many challenges to overcome in this journey. End to end process re-engineering, talent fitment to suit the newly created job roles, role-based training and certifications, creating new approval structures and workflows, setting up new verticals and organising the logistics around large concentrated workplaces were some of those. 

Possibly another first in a local bank, is the creation of strategic workforce planning and HR business partner roles, as well as communities of expertise for corporate HR within the high impact HR transformation roadmap. In all this, the single biggest challenge to overcome was embracing change. The readiness to change, lead, adapt and embrace change for one’s own self were difficult journeys for all of us. This is where the compassion quotient from the trilogy played its utmost role. Giving and receiving compassion with grace is an art we have as a team started to practice, making our Hatna family bonds stronger.  

Leading from the front, and taking people along 

‘Leading from the front, and taking people along’ is one personal favourite mantra. This served us well in this arduous journey. Our mission – take everyone along, leave no one behind. This meant that while most of us did the workload of one, some of us had to carry 1.5 times or 2 times the load. We did this, and we did it in style; in the true spirit of the Hatna family. In our journey of transformation, it was in these difficult moments, that we achieved perfect equilibrium among vision, passion and compassion. We strived to understand the difficulties our tenured staff faced in embracing change, and found many creative change interventions to ease their way into the journey. 

Our efforts in centralisation and instituting the brand-new branch operating model provided to be of great value to the bank’s stakeholders. The most welcome result of this long-term initiative was the improvement of asset quality, compliance, operational and credit controls and mitigation of risk, providing a safe and secure banking proposition to our customers who chose HNB to be their trusted wealth custodian. 

Communicate the expectation, enumerate the result 

Instituting a long-term bank-wide transformation is not complete without having the end goals clearly established. One of the first things we set out to do was, to engage our Top 100 leaders of the bank and through them galvanise the Hatna family. We engaged our unions extensively, onboarding them into our cross functional teams in the Transformation PMO. Communicating the expectations was a critical success factor. We strived to communicate our lofty ambitions in a clear, simple and transparent manner. We made it clear that no one was going to be left behind, no jobs will be cut. The messaging was simple, clear and credible. Our journey had a role and place for each and every team member. So, it was imperative that the expectation from our staff was clearly and simply communicated them. 

This brought about a great dividend of energy, enthusiasm and hope to our people, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This gave them a sense of purpose, belonging and a feeling of security. This is what held us together when the going got rough during tough market conditions due to Easter Sunday attacks and thereafter, COVID-19 business disruptions. 

We projected results and enumerated them. Our belief system held that ‘what gets measured gets done’. This was important for us to have focus and anchor milestone achievements to results. Our overarching vision was conceived to bear fruition through a highly detailed execution strategy. Weaving the success story of 5,000 people united under one goal, to be the partner in progress to the nation was our aim, and the driving force of our intentions. 

Adversity as an opportunity to serve 

Our efforts in digital transformation saw greater traction with the need to provide contactless banking solutions, payments and settlements in a COVID-struck environment. We rapidly accelerated our development work in wallet and digital layer, with our tech teams working round the clock to meet deadlines, while on the other hand our IT resources and capability was stretched to create safe and secure work from home systems to provide essential banking services. 

It was during this period that our internet, mobile and wallet registrations and transactions reached highest levels, as people had no choice but to move to digital platforms to fulfil their banking requirements. Being a bank, with a strong focus on financial inclusion, we mobilised our ATMs and cash recycler machines on floats, to far-off destinations, to provide access to cash to our fellow countrymen who faced food security issues during the first wave lockdown. 

We strive to offer a service par excellence; we achieve it most of the time. There are times, we ought to have done better. We recover those moments of truth with speed and tenacity, applying ourselves with rigour to resolve service issues seamlessly. Service excellence is a hard act to follow, day in day out across multiple customer touchpoints, and to not drop the baton, is a motto we embrace with great gusto. Our experience principles are deal easy, count on us, feel special and know you better. Our 24x7 omni channel contact centre, HNB Connect and Habio, our automated information assistant provide service to customers, giving digital power to the efforts of our committed staff who are serving in the frontlines.  

Play to win and play by the rules 

We are in it to win it. When we set out our transformation agenda, we created the strategy house pillars of business growth, customer experience, productivity, people development and tech enablement, with the foundation being business sustainability. 

Being a financial powerhouse, we uphold highest forms of ethics and governance. We believe the end does not justify the means. Therefore, our culture transformation is aimed at creating a happy and bright workplace of ethical and professional bankers. Happy people whose contentment is sourced from within, who come to our frontline to hold the HNB brand high, and serve our valued customers. Bright people who sparkle innovation and creativity. People who are curious, inventive and spirited. We draw inspiration from the rich history of 132 years behind us and walk into the future with hope and positivism, bound with a sense of Hatna family camaraderie that is truly a life transforming experience. 

Our transformative journey has provided us with rich lessons, we have triumphed in our victories, built courage in adversity and most of all, learnt humility, the greatest lesson of all. We unite as a team at the beginning of every year and observe multireligious faith reflections, and many spiritual observations through the year, because we as an organisation are united in faith, culture and tradition. This week, our Leadership Top 100 virtual strategy meeting ended with a digital opinion poll to describe the outlook for 2021 in one word. The Top 100 leaders of HNB rallied to name positive as the winning word. 



Through many dangers, toils and snares 

We have already come 

T’was Grace that brought us safe thus far 

And Grace will lead us home 

Yes, we are positive about the future. We are positive about our industry. We are positive about our nation.