The Commercial Bank of Ceylon was recently adjudged the ‘Best Bank for Digital Solutions in Sri Lanka’ in 2023 by the prestigious UK-based Asiamoney Magazine, reaffirming the Bank’s position as a leader in digital innovation in the country.
The Bank won this award for enhancing its market leadership in digital banking solutions and ecosystem development, as evidenced by a significant growth in the number of customers utilising its digital banking features, successful rollouts of new digital services, impressive revenues generated from digital banking services, high client satisfaction demonstrated through testimonials, innovative mobile app features, and strategic alliances with digital native businesses, among others.
Commenting on the award, Commercial Bank Managing Director and CEO Mr Sanath Manatunge said: “Commercial Bank is proud to be recognised as the leader in digital innovation in Sri Lanka’s banking sector. Our Vision and Mission statements reflect our commitment to achieving excellence through technology and innovation, and our digital strategy focuses on inclusivity, offering mainstream financial products to all our customers. We will continue to introduce technology that matters in our customers’ lives to create a significant positive impact.”
During the year of assessment for this latest award, Commercial Bank updated ComBank Digital, its state-of-the-art online banking platform, to offer a wide range of services and features, including improved payment capabilities to government institutions, group payments for business users, and the extension of the ‘ComBank Digital App’ to Huawei’s App Gallery. Commercial Bank’s Flash Digital Bank Account received significant updates too, including the launch of the feature on Apple Watch which became the country’s first wearable banking app, introducing video-based KYC activation, offering the ‘Loan against eFD’ service, and enabling investments through ‘Flash Fin FD.’
Additionally, the bank introduced groundbreaking services such as ‘ComBank WhatsApp Banking’ providing customers with banking services through the widely-used messaging platform, and became the first bank in Sri Lanka to launch ‘Bank with ComBank on Viber.’ The Bank’s ePassbook, the first digital passbook in Sri Lanka and South Asia, too was improved with tri-lingual accessibility. The ePassbook is currently used by more than 1.5 million customers with an average of 20 logins per second and over 1,000 active users per minute. Furthermore, the Bank’s digital payment solution, the ComBank Q+ Payment App, became the leading App in Sri Lanka in 2022 while ComBank Digital was one of the top financial apps in use in Sri Lanka. These are some of the few digital rollouts and achievements of the Bank that contributed towards winning this accolade at the 2023 edition of the Asiamoney Best Bank Awards.
Asiamoney’s award decisions were made by a team of senior journalists after receiving submissions from market participants in conjunction with research into the banking and capital markets by the editorial committee. The Magazine’s senior editors also visited each country or territory to meet leading bankers and gather client and competitor feedback.
Established in 1989, Asiamoney is a financial publication of the Euromoney Institutional Investor Group. Asiamoney reports and offers analysis on the financial and investment markets for capital issuers, borrowers, institutional investors and senior corporate and government monetary decision-makers with business interests in Asia Pacific.
Sri Lanka’s first 100% carbon neutral bank, the first Sri Lankan bank to be listed among the Top 1000 Banks of the World and the only Sri Lankan bank to be so listed for 12 years consecutively, Commercial Bank operates a network of 271 branches and 957 automated machines in Sri Lanka. Commercial Bank is the largest lender to Sri Lanka’s SME sector and is a leader in digital innovation in the country’s Banking sector. The Bank’s overseas operations encompass Bangladesh, where the Bank operates 20 outlets; Myanmar, where it has a Microfinance company in Nay Pyi Taw; and the Maldives, where the Bank has a fully-fledged Tier I Bank with a majority stake.