For three decades, Pan Asia Bank has steadily built a brand defined not by size, but by purpose. Guided by its promise of being “The Truly Sri Lankan Bank,” the Bank has consistently focused on understanding and serving the evolving needs of Sri Lankan individuals, entrepreneurs, businesses, and communities. Rather than pursuing growth for its own sake, Pan Asia has differentiated itself through customer-centric innovation, inclusive banking, and a long-standing commitment to creating sustainable value for all stakeholders.
Since its inception, the Bank has introduced products and financial solutions designed to address the needs of customer segments that have traditionally received less attention, particularly SMEs, entrepreneurs, senior citizens, rural communities, and emerging businesses. This philosophy has enabled Pan Asia to build lasting customer relationships founded on trust, accessibility, and personalised service. Today, the Bank continues to strengthen its proposition through innovative lending solutions, digital banking capabilities, and value-added financial products that empower customers to achieve their personal and business aspirations.
Beyond banking, Pan Asia has positioned itself as a catalyst for national development. Through strategic partnerships with organisations such as the National Chamber of Exporters, the National Chamber of Commerce, the Credit Information Bureau, the Institute of Chartered Professional Managers of Sri Lanka and many other professional bodies, the Bank actively promotes entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and responsible financial management. Its SME development programmes, business advisory initiatives, and capacity-building workshops have supported hundreds of entrepreneurs in strengthening their businesses and contributing to Sri Lanka’s economic growth.
Sustainability and community development have also become integral pillars of the Pan Asia brand. Under its unified sustainability platform, Pan Asia Sathkara, the Bank continues to invest in initiatives focused on financial inclusion, environmental conservation, social empowerment, and community resilience. From preserving national heritage and supporting education to responding to community needs during challenging times, these initiatives reflect the Bank’s belief that long-term success is measured not only by financial performance but also by the positive impact it creates for society.
While digital transformation continues to reshape the banking industry, Pan Asia has embraced technology as a means of enhancing, not replacing, the human connection that defines its customer experience. By combining digital innovation with personalised service, the Bank continues to deliver convenient, secure, and relationship-driven banking solutions that meet the expectations of a rapidly evolving customer base.
This consistent focus on customers, innovation, sustainability, and responsible growth has translated into strong business performance. As Pan Asia celebrated its 30th anniversary, total assets surpassed Rs354 billion, the loan portfolio recorded its strongest growth in three decades, and the Bank moved closer to achieving mid-sized bank status. More importantly, these achievements reflect the confidence placed in the Bank by its customers, employees, shareholders, and communities.
The Bank’s inclusion among Sri Lanka’s leading brands in the latest Brand Finance rankings is therefore not merely a recognition of marketing excellence, but an acknowledgement of a sustained journey built on customer trust, purposeful innovation, financial resilience, and a commitment to creating long-term value for the nation.
Echelon sat down with Naleen Edirisinghe, Director/CEO at Pan Asia Bank, to understand the strategy behind the bank’s growth and where it goes from here.
2025 was Pan Asia Bank’s 30th anniversary year, and by most measures, one of its best: assets crossed Rs300 billion, and the share price rose 71%. What does this moment say about where the bank stands today?
We had a plan back in 2023, even though we’ve been around for 30 years, to become a mid-sized bank with a Rs400 billion asset base. We built that plan around five pillars: shifting focus from retail to business banking, growing the aforementioned asset base, improving digital channels, cost efficiency, and improving the quality of our lending.
We had set 2027 as the target to achieve all of this. As it turns out, we’re going to get there in 2026 instead. By 30th June 2026, we had already reached a Rs354 billion asset base.
Pan Asia Bank built its name serving SME entrepreneurs, pensioners and rural communities. Three decades on, it holds 7% of the national remittance market, and its corporate portfolio is growing. How has its brand as a ‘Truly Sri Lankan Bank’ evolved over the years to reflect these ambitions?
We’ve been a truly retail bank for a long time, with a strong presence in the SME sector and 88 branches around the country. We serve pawning customers, leasing customers, government pensioners, and communities from the armed forces. We have maintained a strong presence beyond Colombo for many years, and communities in those areas know us well. That’s part of why we’ve become one of the top 20 service brands in the country: we’re present everywhere in people’s lives. Their home may be funded by us, their father’s pension loan may be funded by us, and their pawning loan may be funded by us.
We’ve also partnered with the National Chamber of Exporters and the Sri Lanka Export Association, running workshops on financial inclusion and financial literacy across the country. We ran a separate programme with the Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka to help people understand and improve their CRIB scores. So we’ve genuinely been with the people all around the country. That’s why we stand by being a truly Sri Lankan bank.
From your digitised onboarding platform to Falcon Eye’s internal customer insights dashboard, Pan Asia has built several digital products that have received award-winning recognition. How do they collectively help the bank serve customers better?
On the customer-facing side, our onboarding platform has cut account-opening time from around 45 minutes to under 10. That first interaction really matters: if it takes half an hour, that account opening is often the only time a customer will ever set foot in a branch, given how much can now be done through QR payments, credit cards and digital apps. We’ve since gone further with video KYC and video onboarding. This made Pan Asia one of the fastest customer onboarding banks in Sri Lanka.
On the internal side, Falcon Eye, which we developed in-house, gives our staff a 360-degree view of a customer’s entire relationship with the bank on one screen, which makes cross-selling and upselling much easier. Most of our systems, including our remittance platform, are built in-house rather than bought in as proprietary third-party systems, which we believe makes them more secure. We also built our own document management system internally, largely to manage circulars. Together, these platforms mean digitisation (automating processes) and digitalisation (changing how we actually operate) are both moving forward at once, and we believe faster than the industry average.
Pan Asia won Gold at the LankaPay Technnovation Awards for the highest growth in digital transactions among Category C banks in 2025. What has its digital transformation strategy prioritised, and how has it transformed daily operations?
Our digital banking solutions, including the mobile application, AP automation, and Cash Recycling Machines (CRMs), let customers handle transfers, deposits, and withdrawals entirely on their own. As a result, over 75% of our transactions are now done digitally. Our ambition is “digital power in every palm,” and that’s the direction we’re pushing towards.
Our transaction growth has been faster than many banks our size, including some mid-sized banks, which is what won us this award: the highest growth in digital transactions in our category, competing even against mid-sized peers. That’s largely down to our staff, who have been trained to actively bring customers into digital banking. We’re seeing that shift most clearly outside Colombo: onboarding and digital transaction usage in our outstation branches have grown rapidly, including strong performance from our branches in the North, East and North Central provinces. The app itself isn’t yet available in all three languages, which is something we’re looking to upgrade, but customers have adapted well to transacting in English, partly because the interface is very visual and easy to follow.
Pan Asia’s gross loan book grew 35% to Rs217 billion in 2025, its strongest credit expansion in three decades. Which segments and sectors drove that growth, and how has the bank positioned itself to build on it?
2025 wasn’t a one-off. The first quarter of 2026 was actually our highest-ever quarter for deposit and advance growth. The growth has come from all three segments: corporate, SME, and retail. On the retail side, leasing, pawning, and housing loans have driven growth. On the corporate side, we hadn’t traditionally been very strong, but offshore lending and participation in syndicated loans have helped that book grow significantly.
Our real focus, though, has been business banking (SME and corporate), on the thinking that supporting businesses naturally drives retail growth too. That shift shows in the numbers: retail used to make up around 60% of our portfolio; it’s now closer to 45%, with business banking, SME and corporate combined, growing to about 55%.
Pan Asia Bank enters 2026 with an asset base that has already crossed Rs330 billion, a target of Rs400 billion by 2027, and 12 branches still to open before hitting its 100-branch cap. What does the next chapter look like, and where will the bank’s growth be coming from?
Our five-pillar strategy remains the foundation, since becoming a mid-sized bank is still the goal. But increasingly, we feel the next stage of growth depends on things beyond technology: leadership, relationships, the human factor. Technology has taken over a lot of retail banking, but in business banking, relationships still matter enormously. We run a leadership programme for our branch managers because of this. Even though we assumed technology would take over everything, the human factor still matters: a strong, well-trained team is what will carry us through this next leap.
That means a lot of training and a lot of emphasis on how our people work with compliance and risk. Errors or fraud can set us back significantly, so we don’t take that lightly. Growth has to be paired with developing our people; it’s a people-driven journey. Once we cross into mid-sized bank status this year, we’ll be shaping our next strategy from there, and we believe the broader momentum is on our side. The Sri Lankan economy is growing, and we’re seeing real improvements in transparency and governance, in both the private sector and government organisations. As a growing commercial bank, we intend to support that momentum, backing the government’s efforts and playing our part in helping the country.
Staying the Course
As Pan Asia closes in on mid-sized bank status, Edirisinghe frames the milestone as a checkpoint, not a destination. The next chapter, he says, will be building on the success the bank has had, and the promises continued to be kept to its long-term customers and overall strategy: pensioners, SME entrepreneurship, and the reach it has within rural communities.
For Pan Asia, growth and identity move together: a truly Sri Lankan bank built on trust, sustained by innovation, and ultimately defined by the results it delivers for the people and businesses that grow with it.