SDB bank appoints Priyantha Talwatte as CEO

Sanasa Development Bank PLC (SDB bank) yesterday announced the appointment of the veteran banker Priyantha Talwatte as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
A filing by SDB bank said the Central Bank approval was received on November 22 to appoint Talwatte as the
bank’s CEO.
Talwatte is a transformational business leader, with 30 years of senior leadership experience and a track record of delivering sustainable stakeholder value.

He was a pioneering senior leader shaping the ascend of Nations Trust Bank PLC (NTB) in Sri Lanka from a small size lender to a top banking powerhouse. He spent the last 20 years at NTB, joining it as Corporate Manager in 2002 and was CEO/Director for the last two years.  Prior to joining NTB, he was a pioneer business leader, who assisted in setting up and scaling several state-of-the-art start-up businesses in the telecommunications industry in Sri Lanka and abroad. He set up the American Express Cards franchise for NTB from the initial phase of conducting feasibility studies to setting up and growing the business to become the market leader in Sri Lanka’s credit card issuing and acquiring business space.He developed segmented banking propositions and established a sales and service culture of the bank and expanded the NTB brand to become a top-of-mind brand name in its effective target markets. Also, he set up the bank’s 24x7 best-in-class contact centre and a centre of excellence for collections and recovery.  He led the bank’s analytics initiative and digital initiative to become one of the strongest digital banks in Sri Lanka and has extensive experience in developing credit underwriting and behaviour score card models and implementing risk ratings for effective risk management of diverse portfolios.

During his tenure as CEO/Director at NTB, the bank transitioned to a fully in-house digital banking development environment, providing a full stack of digital banking services on a micro services platform.  Talwatte is an alumnus of Harvard Business School (AMP) Boston USA and is a renowned speaker and trainer of leadership and management development.