Combank declared Best Bank in Sri Lanka by FinanceAsia for record 8th time

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has been declared the Best Bank in Sri Lanka at the 2018 Country Awards for Achievement of FinanceAsia, considered Asia’s leading financial publishing company.

This is the eighth occasion that Commercial Bank has won this prestigious award in the 10 years since it became the first Sri Lankan institution to be so honoured, underlining the consistency of the bank’s performance in the past decade.

The FinanceAsia Country Awards are based on the respective banks’ performance and key events of the year; financial results including profits, NPL ratios, provisioning, return on equity, capital adequacy ratios, total assets, loans, deposits and branch network; metrics for internal targets; vision and long-term strategy; and market position versus the nearest competitor, and must be backed by feedback of stock market analysts.

Commercial Bank distinguished itself in its category (Private Domestic Banks) in the year of assessment (2017) for FinanceAsia’s Best Bank accolade, achieving the highest market capitalisation, highest gross income, highest operating income, highest profit before tax, highest profit after tax, highest total assets, highest deposits and highest gross loans, and had the best CASA ratio.

The bank also lent Rs. 131.8 billion to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in 2017 alone, paid Rs. 11.5 billion in taxes to the government, channelled 10.56% of the country’s imports and 18.58% of its exports in that year, and was the Sri Lankan bank with the largest footprint in Asia.

“We are naturally elated to win this award for the eighth time,” Commercial Bank’s Chief Operating Officer S. Renganathan said. “The FinanceAsia award is widely regarded as one of the best benchmarks of a bank’s performance and position vis-à-vis its peers because it is based entirely on an evaluation of key performance indicators and the feedback of independent analysts. This uniform assessment makes no special concessions for banks in smaller countries.”

The Finance Asia Best Bank in Sri Lanka award places Commercial Bank alongside some of the leading banks in the region adjudged the Best Domestic Banks in their respective countries this year. They include DBS Bank (Singapore), CTBC Bank (China), Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Siam Commercial Bank (Thailand), Vietcombank (Vietnam), HDFC Bank (India), Bank Central Asia (Indonesia), Kookmin Bank (Korea), CIMB (Malaysia), MCB Bank (Pakistan), and City Bank (Bangladesh).

First published in 1996, FinanceAsia is the world’s foremost information source on the Asian financial markets. Published 11 times a year in Hong Kong, the magazine provides readers with the latest financial trends, interviews, features and investigative reports. The company is owned by Haymarket Media Limited, the largest privately-owned publishing group in the UK.

Sri Lanka’s most-awarded financial institution, Commercial Bank reported total assets of Rs. 1.143 trillion, gross income of Rs. 115.6 billion, net profit of Rs. 16.5 billion, a deposits base of Rs. 850.1 billion and total loans and receivables of Rs. 754.7 billion at the end of FY 2017.

The only Sri Lankan bank to be ranked among the Top 1000 banks of the world for seven years consecutively, Commercial Bank operates a network of 261 branches and 767 ATMs in Sri Lanka. The Bank has won more than 30 international and local awards in 2016 and 2017 and has over the years received multiple awards as Sri Lanka’s Best Bank, Best Trade Bank, Strongest Bank and Most Respected Bank from a number of local and international institutions and publications.

Commercial Bank’s overseas operations encompass Bangladesh, where the bank operates 19 outlets, Myanmar, where it has a Representative Office in Yangon, the Maldives, where the Bank has a fully-fledged Tier I Bank with a majority stake and Italy, where the bank operates its own money transfer service.