Sri Lanka’s banking sector may have seen about 10,000 employees leaving in 2023 out of which a significant number has migrated, as banks resort to massive recruitment drives to fill in the vacancies, a top banker said.
Speaking at a webinar held yesterday (26) by the Centre for Banking Studies of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Hatton National Bank (HNB) Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Alles said that he thinks the banking industry might have lost 10,000 staff in 2023, of which a significant number may have left for migration purposes.
He said that at HNB, with over 5,000 staff, the attrition rate was 3-4% annually but it went up to 7-8% in 2022, with over 400 staff leaving the bank, out of which 170 left for migration purposes.
“When looking at 2023, the number is expected to exceed 520 of which 225 might be for migration, where the percentage (of staff leaving for migration) would be about 40-45%, which also means an attrition rate of 10%,” he said.
Moreover, he said that in order to address the staff exodus, the bank had to recruit at a rapid phase like never before.
Alles said that with most of the exodus taking place at the junior grade, some might think replacing them would be less of a challenge. But he pointed out: “You need to realise that today, junior staff coming out of school are not the same as they were about 10 years ago.”
He said the massive recruitment taking place at the bank means that staff at counters and facing clients are very new at a time when banking regulations and client requests are becoming more complex.
Sri Lanka has 24 licenced commercial banks operating within the country and according to a report by Capital Alliance Ltd. (CAL), about 3,000 staff have left the nine listed commercial banks in 2022, which is a 67.8% increase compared to 2021.
According to Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) data, nearly 147,000 Sri Lankans have left the country in the first half (H1) of 2023 for foreign employment, with over 24,000 leaving the country each month.
A total of 683,363 Sri Lankans have left the country during the same period.