Business
Allianz Lanka wins Claims Initiative of the Year

Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd received the prestigious ‘Claims Initiative of the Year – Sri Lanka’ award at the Insurance Asia Awards 2021 held recently.
Organized by Insurance Asia, a renowned publication devoted to insurance companies, investors, professionals, and policymakers, the Insurance Asia Awards are known as Asia Pacific’s most acclaimed awards programme for the most outstanding insurance firms in the region.
Allianz Lanka was recognized at this prestigious forum for its steadfast commitment to honouring its promise to policyholders and swiftly settling all valid claims in a professional manner as well as its continued efforts to upgrade its service levels, simplify its processes, and introduce innovative solutions that deliver greater value to its customers.
In light of the unprecedented challenges brought about by the tragic events of Easter Sunday in 2019 and the global pandemic in 2020, the insurer strived to offer policyholders much needed additional support. As part of these efforts, Allianz Lanka leveraged technology to further accelerate the processing and payment of claims in a safe and secure manner, settling around 500,000 claims in 2019 and 2020, thereby helping customers recover and get back on their feet, faster.
“We are honoured to stand alongside leading insurers from around the Asia Pacific region and receive the ‘Claims Initiative of the Year – Sri Lanka’ award at the prestigious Insurance Asia Awards for our commitment to securing people’s lives and to giving courage to our customers for what’s ahead. Given the devastating impact of the global pandemic and financial crisis on both businesses and consumers, our teams have gone beyond their call of duty to support our customers, uphold our promises to them and deliver more value,” said Gany Subramaniam, CEO of Allianz Insurance Lanka Ltd. “The heightened concerns around health and safety as well as the periodic movement restrictions have accelerated our ongoing digital transformation process, enabling us to serve our policyholders in a more efficient and effective manner. We look forward to continuing to leverage emerging technologies to deliver innovative services and solutions that give our customers greater confidence in tomorrow.”
In Sri Lanka and around the world, Allianz has always put its customers at the centre of everything it does and sought to understand their evolving needs and expectations as well as any issues they might be faced with to ensure that it can always offer the right mix of products and services. The insurer is transforming itself into a more simple and digital organization. Focusing on the things that really matter to its policyholders, Allianz is working on reducing the number and complexity of its products and processes, guided by the Allianz Customer Model. New business models, harmonized assets, automation, state-of-the-art data analytics are powering its digital drive aimed at empowering its teams, freeing up their time for innovation and customer service.
The Insurance Asia Awards 2021 was held digitally and saw over 100 insurance companies from around 25 countries in the Asia Pacific region being recognized for their conscious efforts to deliver exceptional value and pathbreaking insurance solutions to their stakeholders through this global pandemic. Having received the highest number of nominations since its inception, this year’s winners were picked by an expert panel of judges consisting of Liza Drew, FSO Indirect Tax Leader, Asia Pacific at Ernst & Young; Richard Holloway, Managing Director, South-East Asia & India, Life at Milliman; Giam El Leen, SEA Assurance Leader at Deloitte; and Ruud Sommerhalder, Asia Pacific Insurance Leader, Partner at PwC Hong Kong.
Business
SL needs laser-like focus on IMF programme implementation: Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy

‘If it gets suspended, it would have pretty dramatic consequences’
by Sanath Nanayakkare
There are three most important priorities for Sri Lanka in the wake of the IMF Programme; implementation, implementation and implementation of the agreed upon benchmarks of the programme. Last thing we need to suddenly find is that we have gone off the track of the programme and it is suspended, Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy, Former Governor, Central Bank of Sri Lanka said on Friday.
He said so while giving the keynote speech at a Central Bank hosted webinar titled “What is next for Sri Lanka in the wake of IMF Programme?”
Deshal De Mel, Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Murtaza Jafferjee, Managing Director, JB Securities, Bingumal Thewarathanthri, Chief Executive Officer, Standard Chartered Bank were the panelists at the forum where the moderator was Shiran Fernando, Chief Economist at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce
The following are a few comments made by Dr.Coomaraswamy.
The IMF EFF has now been successfully negotiated. This is in some way the beginning. There is lot more to do. It’s time to start thinking about what happens next. A little under a year ago, there were acute shortages of the most essential good. There were long queues and one or two people passed away while in queue. Prices were skyrocketing and exchange rate was collapsing, inflation was spiking and the Central Bank had to push up interest rates. All this happened only a few months from where we are today. The fact that things have stabilized to a significant extent clearly is a very favourable outcome but actually there is no room for complacency because the stabilization has happened at a low-level equilibrium.
It has happened when the economy experienced a 7.6% contraction last year. It was better than what was anticipated by the IMF and the World Bank, but still it is a very sharp contraction. And we need to get to a situation where we have macro-economic stability with a growth rate of about 4%. There is a lot to be done for this. But this is a very commendable place to get to after all. The Paris Club comprising G7 countries has endorsed our efforts to restore debt sustainability. The non-Paris Club creditors such as India and China also have endorsed and supported our efforts too. So the largest countries and creditors are willing to support Sri Lanka to get back on track in terms of debt sustainability. So this is not a bad place to be.”
“IMF programme implementation has always been a weakness on our part. This time we have already done a lot as prior action but there is more as you would have seen from the documentation tabled in parliament including structural reforms and institutional reform. So we have to have laser-like focus on implementation and move forward with the programme. If the programme gets suspended, it would have pretty dramatic consequences. So we need to keep it on track. We can’t give up the absolutely compelling need for fiscal discipline. What is next for us is; discipline and making the needed economic policy and implementing what e have agreed to do. During our past IMF programmes, the issue was lack of implementation by the Sri Lankan authorities.
Earlier this week Dr. Chandranath Amarasekare, Executive Director at the CBSL arranged for the Irish authorities to brief Sri lankan authorities on the implementation unit set up in Ireland when the global financial crisis hit Ireland which led them to go into an IMF programme. Ireland was meticulous in the way they set up the implementation framework. They identified all the action that had to be taken and assigned parts of it to relevant government entities to implement them. Ireland is back on track now. We need to have the same degree of laser-like focus on implementing the benchmarks. We have to figure out what needs to be done and ascribe responsibility for each action and monitor
carefully how we are going about it. We have to make sue we are hitting all the targets and structural benchmarks as we go along. These are embedded in the IMF programme. Last thing we need is to suddenly find that we have gone off the track of the programme and the programme is suspended. That will constrain the inflows to the country and it will affect the confidence beginning to build up now. All that will get undermined if the programme gets suspended because we are not able to keep it on track. So the Implementation Unit will need a very good authority to reach out to any part of government and get things done. We need this Implementation Unit to be well-structured and running well. And it should have the authority of the President behind it,”he said.
Business
Exterminators PLC opens a training and R&D center

Exterminators PLC, Sri Lanka’s premier pest tech and environmental tech company, opened a 5,000 plus square foot training, research and development center to enhance the quality of service via in-depth innovation to create a circular economy inorder to meet the growing demand in environmentally sustainable public health pest management, agricultural pest management, livestock, plantation and landscape pest management, sanitation and disinfection services in Sri Lanka and emerging and developing markets. The facility includes simulated environments for training in pest management, termite management, mosquito management, sanitation and disinfection, health and safety for new recruits and continuous professional training and development for existing employees.
The company plans to provide training for international pest management professionals in emerging and developing countries as well as serve as a training facility for its strategic franchising partners in the region.
Business
SLT-MOBITEL ‘Hosting Cub’ for MSMEs enables critical infrastructure and value-added hosting services

Understanding the importance of supporting Micro, Small, And Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) to drive growth and efficiencies, SLT-MOBITEL, the National ICT Solutions Provider is offering its Hosting Cub – Shared Web Hosting service catering to vital hosting requirements.
SLT-MOBITEL provides hosting facilities for MSMEs with affordable pricing, easy expansion of MSMEs cyber presence and other value-added offerings via its Shared Hosting and Virtual Private Server (VPS) solutions.
The Shared Hosting proposal is offered as the most economical option available for hosting. The overall cost of server maintenance is shared, also catering to low traffic websites that do not require higher bandwidth such as smaller websites and blogs.
The Share Hosting solution is available via four levels – Stellar, Stellar Plus, Stellar Pro and Stellar Business. The ‘Stellar’ package 1 GB VSAN Disk Space to balance storage usage, monthly 20 GB Bandwidth, 2 Mbps speed, 10 websites allowed, secure connection through SSL, FTP Accounts to manage file transfers, Unlimited email accounts, Unlimited MySQL Database to manage data, Unlimited Sub Domains, Hosting in SLT’s state-of-the-art Data Centre and WordPress supported. The pack is priced at only Rs 7500 per annum.
Similarly, the Stellar Plus presents an enhanced package with 2 GB VSAN Disk Space, monthly 40 GB Bandwidth, approval of 15 websites in addition to all the other value-additions. It is priced at Rs 12,000 per year. The Stellar Pro delivers 3 GB VSAN Disk Space, monthly 100 GB Bandwidth and 30 websites allowed while the Stellar Business provides 5 GB VSAN Disk Space, monthly 150GB Bandwidth and 40 websites. All other features are also enabled. The costs for Stellar Pro and Stellar Business are Rs 16,500 and Rs 25,500 respectively, per annum.
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