Upul Adikari, Manager – Marketing & Communication, HNB accepting the Award from Dr. R. L. Bhatia


Hatton National Bank (HNB) received an award for 'Excellence & Leadership in Branding & Marketing' at the Golden Globe Tigers Summit Awards 2015 held recently in Malaysia.

The Golden Globe Tigers awards is organized by the Asian Confederation of Business and presented by CMO Asia and CMO Council.

HNB won the 'Marketing Campaign of The Year' category award for the marketing and communications campaign developed for HNB MOMO the mobile POS solution introduced by the bank for the first time in Sri Lanka in 2013. HNB MOMO has enabled merchants as well as customers to conveniently process card based transactions. The solution was introduced at a time when card based transactions was a privilege limited to mid to large scale retailers, supermarkets and hotels. With the introduction of HNB MOMO it has captured a market of small retailers to mid and large retailers that include home delivery, super market chains, clothing stores, luxury cab services and professionals like doctors and lawyers etc and entrepreneurs who are constantly on the move giving them an affordable, easy to use, secure payment acceptance mechanism.

The innovative integrated marketing communications campaign launched by the bank to launch HNB MOMO was successful in creating a successful brand name in a short time span for the product which resulted in mobile POS machines being referred to as MOMOs by the general public.

By simply installing the "MOMO" application on their smartphones merchants can use the MOMO device, a small unit which is provided by HNB, for the acceptance of payment cards. The MOMO mobile POS application is available on Android, iOS and Java platforms and is a lightweight solution providing agility and portability The product comes with multiple layers of security to safeguard both the customers and merchants.

Thimal Perera - DGM - Retail & SME Banking said “HNB is delighted to win the Marketing Campaign of the year award at the Golden Globe Tigers Summit - Awards 2015 which is a fitting reward for the very focused marketing and communication approach the bank took with very strategic marketing communication choices at the time of launching HNB MOMO in Sri Lanka."

Hatton National Bank is a premier private sector commercial bank with the largest branch network among private sector commercial banks, spread across the length and breadth of Sri Lanka and caters to all segments of the market through its diverse product and service offering. The Bank is also involved in insurance and capital market operations in the Country through its Group companies. During 2014, the Group assets surpassed Rs 600Bn, while the Group recorded a post-tax profit of over Rs 10Bn for the year. Hatton National Bank has been awarded by the Asian Banker Magazine as the 'Best Retail Bank in Sri Lanka' for 7 years for its performance from 2007 to 2012 and in 2014 and named as the 'Bank of the Year in Sri Lanka' for the year 2012 & 2013 by the Banker Magazine of UK. In 2012 HNB became the first Sri Lankan bank to obtain an international credit rating and was assigned a foreign currency issuer rating of B1 on par with the sovereign rating by Moody’s Investors Service, while it has a national long term rating of AA- (lka) by Fitch Ratings (Lanka) Ltd.