Commercial Bank adjudged ‘Best Bank in Sri Lanka’ for record 14th year

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has once again been adjudged Sri Lanka’s Best Bank by Global Finance magazine, giving the bank the distinct honour of winning this prestigious award for 14 consecutive years.

The US-based magazine has named its ‘Best Emerging Market Banks in Asia’ rankings in an exclusive survey to be published in the May 2012 issue.

Ranked alongside Commercial Bank are Asian banking giants of the calibre of China Construction Bank (CCB) in China, ICICI Bank in India, Korea Exchange Bank in South Korea, Chinatrust Commercial Bank in Taiwan and UniCredit Bank of Russia in the Central/Eastern Europe region; Standard Bank of South Africa in the Africa region and National Bank of Kuwait and Emirates NBD Bank of the UAE in the Middle East region.

“Besides the signal honour of being adjudged the country’s best by an eminent international panel of experts, this award is particularly significant because we have won it 14 times in a row,” Commercial Bank Acting CEO Ravi Dias said. “Consistency in performance is especially valued in the financial services sector, and more so in challenging times.”

“Awards of this nature are also a tribute to the entire Commercial Bank team, because it is the professionalism, hard work and passion of staff at all levels that enable us to retain our status as Sri Lanka’s benchmark private bank,” Dias added.

The annual Best Banks ranking covering developed as well as emerging markets is compiled by Global Finance editors with input from industry analysts, corporate executives and banking consultants.  In selecting these top banks, editors consider factors that range from the quantitative objective to the informed subjective.

Criteria for choosing the winners includes growth in assets, profitability, strategic relationships, customer service, competitive pricing, and innovative products. Subjective criteria include the opinions of equity analysts, credit rating analysts, banking consultants and others involved in the industry. The mix of these factors selects leading banks that may not be the largest, the oldest or the most diversified in a given region, but rather the best — the banks with which companies around the world would most likely want to do business.

The Global Finance survey covers best banks in Africa, Asia, Central & Eastern Europe, Developed Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America. This year’s survey showed many leading banks in countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, and South Korea losing their previous positions in the Best Emerging Market Banks in Asia ranking while Commercial Bank has maintained its position for 14 consecutive years.

Global Finance’s Best Bank awards are presented at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. during the annual World Bank/IMF Meetings in Washington.

Founded in 1987, Global Finance has a circulation of more than 50,000 and is read in 163 countries. The magazine’s audience includes chairmen, presidents, CEOs, CFOs, treasurers and other senior financial officers responsible for making investment and strategic decisions at multinational companies and financial institutions. Global Finance also targets the 8,000 international portfolio investors responsible for more than 80 per cent of all global assets under professional management.

The only Sri Lankan Bank listed in the World’s Top 1,000 Banks, the Commercial Bank of Ceylon is Sri Lanka’s largest private bank. In addition to its 14 Global Finance Best Bank awards, the Bank has won multiple awards as the country’s best bank from ‘The Banker,’ ‘FinanceAsia,’ ‘Euromoney’ and ‘Trade Finance’ magazines.