FinanceAsia declares Commercial Bank Best Bank in Sri Lanka

Confers two prestigious awards – Country Award for 2016 and one-off Platinum Award for 2 decades of country-leading performance

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon has won two more prestigious international accolades, being adjudged the ‘Best Bank’ in Sri Lanka in 2016, and presented a Platinum award for 20 years of excellence by the Hong Kong based ‘FinanceAsia’ magazine, one of the most respected financial publications in the region.

This is the sixth ‘FinanceAsia Country Banking Achievement Award’ presented to Commercial Bank in the eight years since the bank became the first entity in Sri Lanka to receive this coveted tribute in 2009. Additionally, as FinanceAsia celebrates 20 years covering Asia’s financial markets this year, the magazine has chosen Commercial Bank as one the recipients of a one-off Platinum Award presented to banks and corporations that have consistently excelled over the past two decades, providing utmost quality and innovation to customers.

The FinanceAsia Country Award is based on the respective banks’ financial performance and considers profits, NPL ratios, provisioning, return on equity, capital adequacy ratios, total assets, loans, deposits, branch network, vision and long-term strategy, market position versus the nearest competitor, principal sources of profit, and feedback of stock market analysts.

“There are no subjective assessments for the FinanceAsia awards, which are based strictly on hard facts and figures,” Commercial Bank Managing Director/CEO Jegan Durairatnam said. “They are therefore an excellent benchmark not only to reaffirm the bank’s position in the market, but to compare its performance with other top banks in the region.”

FinanceAsia’s Country Banking Achievement Awardsfor2016 ranks Commercial Bank alongside many banking giants in the region including HSBC and DBS, adjudged the best in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively; as well as banks of the calibre of ICBC (China), CTBC (Taiwan), ICICI (India), Kasikornbank (Thailand), Busan Bank (Korea), Bank Central Asia (Indonesia), Techcombank (Vietnam), MCB Bank (Pakistan) and Dutch-Bangla Bank (Bangladesh).

The full list of this year’s winners is to be published in the July issue of FinanceAsia, which will be in circulation in mid June.

First published in 1996, FinanceAsia is Asia’s leading financial publishing company and 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 Ltd., the largest privately-owned publishing group in the UK.

Commercial Bank’s assets exceeded Rs. 924 billion as at Q1 2016, while its loan book and deposit base totalled Rs. 555.484 billion and Rs. 653.040 billion respectively. Profit before tax for FY 2015 was Rs. 17.144 billion and net profit Rs. 11.903 billion. The only Sri Lankan bank to be ranked among the Top 1000 banks of the world for five consecutive years, Commercial Bank operates a network of 250 branches in Sri Lanka and an ATM network of 626 terminals. 

The bank was ranked the most valuable private sector brand in Sri Lanka in 2014 and has also won multiple awards as Sri Lanka’s best bank from a number of international publications over several years. It was adjudged one of Sri Lanka’s 10 best corporate citizens by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce in 2013 and 2014.

Commercial Bank’s overseas operations encompass Bangladesh, where the bank operates 18 branches and Myanmar, where it has a Representative Office in Yangon. In September 2015, it received regulatory approval for the establishment of a fully-fledged Tier I Bank in the Republic of Maldives. The bank also received license to operate a fully owned Money Transfer Operation in Italy recently.