APB President appointed as 20th GM/CEO of Bank of Ceylon

Incumbent APB President Koliya Senarath Bandara was appointed as the 20th General Manager/Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Ceylon. Bandara succeeded D.M. Gunasekara, a veteran banker who served as the General Manager/CEO over five years at the Bank of Ceylon.

Bandara has been a very active member of the Association of Professional Bankers – Sri Lanka and was elected as the President of APB- Sri Lanka in March 2017. Under his leadership and presidency, the APB expanded its activities and held a very successful convention on the theme ‘Changing Dynamics – Bank of the Future’ in November 2017. 

Bandara has to his credit an illustrious career spanning over 28 years serving at the Bank of Ceylon since joining the bank as a Management Trainee in 1990.  Since then he has served the bank covering many strategically important areas including retail, corporate and international banking and  held several key positions in the bank in its Overseas Branches, International and Corporate Relations in the capacity of Assistant General Manager and was promoted to the Grade of Deputy General Manager in which capacity, sphered business initiatives in Development Banking, Electronic Banking, Product Management, Sales and Channel Management and Branch Operations to a new dimension. Also he served as the Chief Executive Officer of Bank of Ceylon (UK) Ltd., London during 2011-2012.

Bandara was instrumental in implementing several key projects successfully in the bank such as London Branch Subsidiarisation, Core Banking System upgrade, bank transformation project to name a few.

Prior to joining the bank, he served as a Temporary Assistant Lecturer at the University of Kelaniya and as a Statistician at Planning and Monitoring Unit of Mahaweli Authority. He had been a resource person for several years at the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka in the field of credit and investment management. He currently serves as a member of the Governing Board of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and as a Director of Merchant Bank of Sri Lanka.

Bandara servers in the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka as a Council Member and is the incumbent President of the Association of Professional Bankers – Sri Lanka. 

Bandara was born and raised in Kurunegala and studied at Indulgodakanda Central College. He obtained his degree from the University of Kelaniya in Physical Science with a Second Class Upper Division and his MBA degree was obtained from the Postgraduate Institute of Management, University of Sri Jayewardenepura with a merit pass. 

He is also an Alumnus of the Harvard Business School, USA, where he successfully completed an Advanced Management Program. He is a Fellow member of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Bank Management from the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and was adjudged as the Best Student in the year.

Bandara is married to a teacher by profession and is a loving father of two children. His son is a Manufacturing Engineer working at Tata Steel Europe in the UK and daughter is a second year under graduate reading for a degree in Biology. Bandara hails from a respectable family and is the youngest child of a family of five.