Strategic Report

materiality Matters

The four pillars of Prudent Growth, Corporate Conscience, Winning Team and Operational Excellence build on our foundations, sound Corporate Governance and Risk Management. (Figure 4) Our plans for growth are ambitious and carefully crafted on principles of inclusive and responsible banking. Corporate conscience reflects our values and determines how we conduct business and engage with communities, shaping our culture and impacting the brand. Our team is the key differentiator, enabling us to compete effectively and seek new heights in performance. Operational excellence in all areas is key to delivering value to our stakeholders and ensuring that we are fit for the future.

Material Issues for 2016

Figure 4

Our growth strategies are based on principles of sustainable growth and are primarily focused on understanding the customer aspirations and delivering value in a responsible manner through technologies that drive the lifestyles. Towards this end our lending and investment products are developed and marketed to support financial needs of our customers for their socio-economic progress.

Good governance, ethical practices and sound risk management policies, applied across all four business verticals, make up the DNA of our success story. We are committed to adopting the best practices in these evolving areas to secure the sustainability of our business and safeguard our reputation.

In a service organisation the power of human mind will drive the organisation to new heights. We have a winning team functioning in a conducive environment that has aligned their aspirations with those of the organisation. Indeed, the organisation’s strategies for growth rely on the motivation, innovation, hard work and commitment of our people whom we seek to develop to increase our capacity for creating value.

Operational excellence is necessary to optimise our capacity to create value for our stakeholders forming the Fourth Pillar of our strategy. We continue to explore avenues for eliminating waste thereby streamlining operations to ensure that costs of services are curtailed and processes made more robust and efficient.

Our strategic planning process takes in to account the mega trends, (such as population growth, urbanisation etc.) as depicted in Figure 4 on page 32 shaping the industry which are monitored to identify new opportunities and emerging threats to sharpen focus on our future.

Material matters are identified through a critical evaluation of the Bank’s value creation processes based on a structured corporate planning exercise and also through the issues identified via our stakeholder engagement processes (Figure 2 on page 30). Identified issues were then prioritised and matters for inclusion in this Report were determined bearing in mind their materiality as depicted in the following grid (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Mapping Material Issues to GRI Indicators and UNGC Principles

      Material Issues   Relevant GRI Indicator/Other Regulations   UNGC Principles

Prudent

Growth

  Venturing into New Markets   HR1    
  Customer Satisfaction   PR5, SO11    
  Inclusive Banking   EC7, FS13, FS14    
  Transparency of Products and Services   PR3    
  Responsible Lending   FS1-5, FS7, FS8 CBSL Requirements   Principles 7-9
  Responsible Investment   HR1    
  Innovation   Not covered in GRI    

Corporate

Conscience

    Conduct & Business Ethics   PR9, SO4-5, SO7-8, HR7, EN27    
  Customer Security and Safety   PR1-3, PR6-9    
  Community Engagement   EC6, SO1-2, SO11    
  Financial Literacy & Capacity Building   EC8   Principles 1,4-5,8
  Procurement Practices   EC9, EN32-33, LA14, SO9-10, HR5-6, HR10-11    

Winning
Team

    Employee Engagement   HR4    
  Employee Relations   LA4, LA16, HR4   Principles 1-5
  Employee Productivity   LA1-3, LA12-13, HR3, HR5-6   Principles 4-6
  Employee Health & Safety   LA8   Principles 1-2
  Training & Development   LA9-11    

Operational

Excellence

    Earnings Growth   EC1    
  Channel Migration   Not covered in GRI    
  Environmental Impacts   EN6, EN23, EN27, EN32, FS9   Principles 7,9
  Automation   Not covered in GRI    
Risk & Capital Management   FS6    
Strong Governance and Organisation Culture   SO3, SO5, SO8, PR9   Principles 10

Material Issues identified are framed in terminology relevant to the Bank (Figure 4 on page 32) and mapped to the aspects of the GRI-G4 Guidelines and the UNGC Principles (Figure 6). Consequent to this reconciliation, there are issues that are not specifically included in the GRI G4 Guidelines which we have included as material aspects. We also considered the mega trends impacting businesses globally and locally to appraise both the opportunities and risks they present to the Bank and these have been mapped around the material issues to complete the picture. The boundaries for material aspects and GRI Content Index are detailed in Annex III on page 414.

We are already experiencing the impact of technology and its meteoric evolution which has radically changed the face of banking today. The transition from ‘brick and mortar’ banking to ‘feet on the street’ and then to 24/7 web and mobile-based solutions has already taken place. The almost limitless nature of technological change makes one thing certain – technology will evolve further and continue to underpin the functioning of the bank of tomorrow.
As process is to the present, technology is to the future