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Echelon Magazine - February 2016

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Echelon Magazine Description:

Publisher: Capital-Media-(Pvt)-Ltd

Category: Business

Language: English

Frequency: Monthly

Intelligent Storytelling

The one thing that will define the Echelon magazine will be the quality of the storytelling. Echelon,published monthly, will cover in depth Sri Lanka’s most successful businesses, examine their winning strategiesand profile their leaders in immersive stories. Great stories are also never limited to words, and our approach includes rich photography, bold graphics and leading edge design which together will make for a compelling read.

But business doesn’t start and end in a boardroom;it extends to the golf club greens, to international travel and to pursuits that blurthe lines between commercial venture and sheer passion. The Echelon team will present the best in business and lifestyle coverage that will appeal to an exclusive and affluent readership: an otherwise hard to reach demographic.

Content will be developed by one of the most experienced and proven teams of editors, financial journalists, photographers and designers in the country.This team has already raised the bar for powerful and expertly crafted business news. Shamindra Kulamannage, will lead the editorial team.

The reputation of Echelon is being built on the separation between editorial and advertising. However we are also looking for the most creative and impactful new formats that can be applied in our magazines, iPad app as well as website to help our clients reach our audience. We are flexible and creative and we will have a solution for every single advertiser who wants to reach our audience.

We are passionate about creative results and about working with our advertisers to help them create bespoke multi platform creative solutions with our in house creative team and of course our sales team.

Echelon will be a great place to show off the products and capabilities of our clients because they will be surrounded by an editorial product that is expertly crafted, full of integrity and intelligence.

In this issue

There is more to sound borrowers than a credit record
Many Sri Lankan households will not have even a single member with a credit record. These households are ones that have never borrowed money from a financial institution like a bank or finance company. Although banking is fairly widespread, lending is unfortunately concentrated around big cities and large companies. Credit records exist in cases when a vehicle lease has been obtained. Gold-backed loans – because a liquid asset backs them – don’t generate a credit record.
Besides vehicle leases, personal loans and cards are credit products that result in a credit score. Banking for the financially excluded (those without a credit score) can be both profitable due to higher margins, and reduce risks because the borrowers are dispersed and often require less capital as support. So far, banks have been happy to market personal credit products to those with decent credit scores, ignoring everyone else. Finance companies – which by design serve subprime borrowers more – have made more inroads, but also stop short of offering anything but the safest type of asset-backed facilities. However, they should all take note of the imaginative approach of a new competitor to attract customers who don’t have a credit record.
That firm, Rukula, started by Anythink.lk founder Reeza Zarook, has been refining its lending strategy to the financially excluded for over a year. Now it’s ready to go big, expanding operations across Sri Lanka and entering at least one other sizable Asian country. Because the risks are high, Zarook’s interest rates touch 80%. Before you scream ‘loan shark’, consider how innovative and enterprising a firm that lends to tuk-tuk drivers and fishermen must be that it requires enough of a return to justify the risks its shareholders are taking. Rukula is also inadvertently establishing credit scores for its clients and demonstrating that there is more to sound borrowing than a mere credit record.