Commercial Bank named Best Bank in Sri Lanka for 7th time by FinanceAsia

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon Plc has been adjudged the Best Bank in Sri Lanka by FinanceAsia at the magazine’s annual Country Banking Achievement Awards for domestic banks.

This is the seventh Best Bank award conferred on Commercial Bank by the prestigious Hong Kong based publication in the nine years since the bank became the first entity in Sri Lanka to receive this coveted accolade in 2009.

The FinanceAsia Country Awards are based on the respective banks’ performance along with key events of the year, financial results including 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.

Announcing its 2017 winners, FinanceAsia said the competition was extremely tight this year, with numerous financial institutions proving their resilience in a difficult regulatory and banking environment.

Ranked alongside Commercial Bank as the best domestic banks in their respective countries this year are DBS Bank (Singapore), ICBC (China), HSBC (Hong Kong), CTBC Bank (Taiwan), Siam Commercial Bank (Thailand), Vietcombank (Vietnam), HDFC Bank (India), Bank Central Asia (Indonesia), Busan Bank (Korea), CIMB (Malaysia), National Bank of Pakistan (Pakistan), KBZ Bank (Myanmar), BDO Unibank (Philippines) and Eastern Bank (Bangladesh).

“We are particularly pleased to once again receive the FinanceAsia Best Bank award because it is based entirely on key performance indicators and the feedback of analysts,” Commercial Bank’s Managing Director/CEO Jegan Durairatnam said.

“It is a uniform evaluation for banks in markets of vastly differing sizes with no special consideration for smaller countries. This award is a credible benchmark of the bank’s position in the market.”

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.

Sri Lanka’s largest and most profitable private bank and the country’s most-awarded financial institution, Commercial Bank plays a significant role in the national economy. The bank accounted for 4.31% of the total market capitalisation of the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) in 2016 with a market capitalisation of $ 790 million at the end of the year. The bank is the largest lender in Sri Lanka to SMEs, having disbursed Rs. 952 billion to the sector over the past five years, and channels 17.82% of the country’s export volumes and 8.36% of its import volumes.

For FY 2016, Commercial Bank reported assets of Rs. 1.012 trillion, gross income of Rs. 93.143 billion, net profit of Rs. 14.513 billion, a deposits base of Rs. 739.563 billion and a loan book of Rs. 633.391 billion.

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 opened a fully-fledged Tier I Bank in September 2016 and Italy, where the bank launched its own money transfer service in November 2016.