Business Model

Stakeholders

As a part of a socio-economic ecosystem, DFCC Bank is dependent on building and maintaining robust relationships with its stakeholders across all its operations. The Bank proactively identifies the needs and expectations of stakeholders to determine how to best integrate their concerns into the decision-making process.

Shareholders and investors

The Bank’s investors ensure continued growth by providing equity and debt capital. The Bank has a responsibility to its investors to provide optimal and sustainable returns on their investments.

The Bank’s Corporate Communications Policy and Investor forums help investors to understand the Bank’s future strategies and sustainable development goals to make informed decisions about investments in the Bank. The Bank publicly publishes information about its financial performance and progress through the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) and the Annual Report, media releases, and the corporate website. Every effort is made to convey context and insight on the Bank’s value creation process.

Customers

Customers are the source of the Bank’s earnings. It is critical to understand their evolving needs and requirements to provide them with a portfolio of relevant products and services, thus maintaining a profitable and sustainable business. DFCC Bank is committed to delivering a great customer experience through innovative products and responsive service in line with its customer centric strategy.

Employees

The Bank’s employees are the backbone of the Organisation, embodying its core values to achieve its strategic objectives. The Bank empowers them with continuous training, fostering innovation and creativity within the workplace and spurring collaboration. Employees can access the Bank’s Internal Code of Conduct through the internal web portal. The Code of Conduct expresses the Bank’s ethics in relation to the avoidance of conflict of interest, insider dealings, unfair business practices, and the confidentiality of sensitive information. The Bank’s Whistle-blowing Policy encourages employees to report any observations of illegal or unethical practices. A Board-approved Grievance Handling Policy ensures that employees are provided with a fair and equitable work environment.

Business partners

The Bank’s business partners include institutions that provide lines of credit (to manage or to on-lend) and vendors providing goods and services necessary for the Bank’s business operations. The Bank maintains strong relationships with all its business partners, who are an important constituent of the Bank’s value chain and play a critical role in helping it to create sustainable value. For the Bank’s suppliers, a Procurement Policy has been established. Communications with suppliers are primarily based on securing competitive pricing for goods of a certain quality and reliability, while building mutually beneficial, long-term relationships.

Regulators

Regulators protect and enhance the country’s financial system through the implementation and enforcement of rules and regulations, thus enabling a stable business environment to enhance customer confidence and mitigate reputation risks. The Bank adopts sustainable banking practices in compliance with the SLBA sustainable banking principles and complies with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements including the CBSL’s roadmap for sustainable finance in Sri Lanka (2019) and conducts its business in an ethical, transparent, and responsible manner.

Communications with regulators often cover compliance with regulations, business operations, financial information pertaining to the Bank, voluntary guidelines and best practices, new legal and regulatory developments, financial inclusion, and matters affecting the financial sector. The Bank also engages with regulators through industry bodies via the timely submission of prescribed reports and returns, participation in meetings, forums, task forces, conferences, media releases, and the corporate website.

Communities

Communities are people, groups, organisations, or businesses that have an interest or concern in the community. The Bank and its other stakeholders can affect or be affected by the community’s actions, objectives, and policies. Some examples of key community stakeholders are residents, community groups, developers, government workers (and the agencies they represent), business owners, neighbourhood leaders, commission members, and other groups from which the community draws its resources.

DFCC Bank supports its local communities through its sustainability efforts and CSR activities linked to its sustainability goals, and the thematic areas it focuses on for optimising impact.

Advocacy groups

Advocacy groups such as the media and international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), use various forms of advocacy to influence public opinion and ultimately policy, and thus play an important role in the development of political and social systems. Motives for action may be based on political, religious, moral, or commercial positions. Groups use varied methods to try to achieve their aims, including lobbying, media campaigns, publicity stunts, polls, research, and policy briefings. Some groups are supported or backed by powerful business or political interests and exert considerable influence on the political process, while others have few or no such resources.

Therefore it is important for the Bank to understand their perceptions and expectations, so that the Bank may accordingly mould its operations and CSR initiatives to foster mutually beneficial partnerships.

Industry associations

Industry associations are stakeholders that represent multiple members. They may be organised for specific sectors or private sector apex bodies such as business chambers and can also have a regional or international dimension. These associations are usually setup to represent interest of their members in national policy level and to provide/obtain information to and from their members. Industry associations play an important role in consultation processes, as it is very difficult for individual entities to follow and participate in all such matters due to lack of time, resources, and information. DFCC Bank therefore interacts closely with industry associations for mutual benefit.

Stakeholder engagement

DFCC Bank, as a responsible corporate entity, considers its engagement with its various stakeholders to be vital to creating a sustainable business. The Bank continuously seeks to better understand its stakeholders and their expectations and maintains an open dialogue with them, using their feedback to constantly improve its operations. The following table details the methodology the Bank uses in its stakeholder engagement and the frequency of communication and key topics raised.