Hatton National Bank - Sri Lanka: Project Results & Lessons

The objective of the HNB project was to support the bank’s strategy for diversifying its agricultural portfolio. Given that the bank’s agriculture financing focused primarily on financing large-scale agribusiness operations, HNB wanted to strengthen its institutional capacity to expand its services to other agricultural segments, including smallholder farmers. More specifically the project aimed at improving the bank’s agriculture finance systems and processes, developing new agricultural loan products, expanding its rural outreach, enhancing staff capacity, and implementing farmer education programs to better manage risk. Overall, the project strengthened HNB’s capacity to serve more efficiently a wider range of agricultural clients in Sri Lanka.

This brief provides an overview of the initial results and lessons from the project, which may be useful for other financial institutions seeking to enhance their capacity to finance agriculture in an efficient and sustainable way.