NDB’s Dimantha Seneviratne wins Best Banking CEO of the Year 2020 Sri Lanka

NDB Chairman Eshana De Silva hands over Best Banking CEO 2020 award to NDB Director/Group CEO Dimantha Seneviratne

The International Business Magazine recently named NDB Group CEO Dimantha Seneviratne as the ‘Best Banking CEO of the Year 2020’ in Sri Lanka, at its International Business Magazine Awards 2020. 

Seneviratne was one of the five Best Banking CEOs selected for the prestigious recognition in Asia. The International Business Magazine is a UAE-based quarterly publication, covering a range of discussion areas in business, banking, finance and technology and has a wide global readership spread across the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe. 

The International Business Magazine’s awards programmes are conducted by the magazine’s subject matter experts and strong research analysts, who carefully inspect, verify and scrutinise all awards nomination in selecting the winners.

Seneviratne was instrumental in propelling NDB towards exceptional performance and taking the bank to a new league of top banks in the country, surpassing the Rs.500 billion mark for total assets in 2019. 

Under his leadership, he also led the bank to earn reputed international accolades such as ‘Best Bank’ in Sri Lanka by the Global Finance Magazine USA and ‘The Bank of the Year’ Sri Lanka by The Banker Magazine UK, in 2018. This was one of the rare occasions that a Sri Lankan bank secured both of these coveted awards in a single year and the only instance that a mid-sized bank achieved same.

NDB was also recognised as the Best Domestic Bank in Sri Lanka by the Asia Money Magazine in 2020, for the second consecutive year and also became the Best Consumer Digital Bank Sri Lanka 2020, under the Global Finance World’s Best Digital Bank Awards 2020 programme, for the second consecutive year. Under Seneviratne’s leadership, NDB has recorded impressive compound annual growth rates (CAGR) of 25 percent and 21 percent in customer deposits and customer advances, respectively over the past four years – the highest such growth rates recorded in the Sri Lankan banking sector. Seneviratne counts over 30 years of experience in the banking industry. Prior to taking over the helm at NDB in January 2017, he functioned as Director/CEO at PABC for three years. More than half of his career (16 years) was with the HSBC group, where he held key senior management positions, including Chief Risk Officer Post of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, Bangladesh and Thailand, responsible for balanced business growth, strategy and governance, as a member of the Country Leadership Team. 

He commenced his banking career with Sampath Bank and has also served in Overseas Trust Bank, Colombo Branch and the Saudi British Bank.

Seneviratne is currently Chairman of the Sri Lanka Banks’ Association and a Director of LankaClear Private Limited and the Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka, three critical constituents in the financial services sector in Sri Lanka, which have implemented groundbreaking initiatives in the recent past. He is also a Director of several NDB group subsidiary companies engaged in capital market services in Sri Lanka.