Sampath Bank – Jaffna

Sampath Bank PLC is a licensed commercial bank incorporated in Sri Lanka in 1986 with 224 branches and 373 ATMs island wide. It has won the “Bank of the Year” award by “The Banker” of Financial Times Limited – London, for the second consecutive year and the “National Business Excellence Awards 2010”.[citation needed] It has become the third largest private sector bank in Sri Lanka with Rs. 453 billion in deposits as of 30 June 2016.

The bank was originally incorporated as Investment and Credit Bank Limited in 1987. The bank became popularly known as Sampath. In 1988, Sampath Bank started to operate a multi-point network of automated teller machines (ATMs) for the first time in the country, as “Sampath Electronic Teller” or “SET”. Then, with the popularity of ATM banking introduced MasterCard (in 1989), PBU (Personal Banking Unit) and Uni-Banking System. The bank was the first to introduce debit cards in South Asia in 1997 and was the first in Sri Lanka to issue a debit card instantly at the time of opening an account. The first ever Cheque Imaging & Truncating (CIT) site in Sri Lanka was launched by Sampath Bank in 2004. Since 2009, the bank is the third largest private sector bank in Sri Lanka in terms of total assets.