People’s Bank has posted a historic Rs40.2 billion profit after tax for 2025, a milestone that arrives on the back of one of the toughest periods in Sri Lanka’s recent economic history and a digital transformation that has pulled 5.3 million customers onto the bank’s mobile and online platforms, up from 4.4 million a year earlier in 2024. Euromoney named it Sri Lanka’s Best Digital Bank in 2025.
People’s Bank was founded in 1961 to bring formal banking to communities the existing financial system had largely left untouched, from rural households to small cooperatives that conventional lenders had little interest in serving. More than sixty years on, its record earnings and record digital growth suggest that original purpose has endured.
The bank’s conviction is evident in its performance. A multi-language push, marketing and branch staff deployed in Sinhala, Tamil and English across the East and North, brought digital banking to communities historically underserved by both language and geography. The Bank’s 740-plus branches and service centres now anchor its role in the National QR Payment Adoption Programme, a state-backed initiative to widen merchant acceptance of QR-code payments beyond the country’s largest cities, through its People’s Pay app. That effort is underpinned by an ISO 27001:2022 certification, the current global benchmark for information security management, and a newly established Security Operations Centre and Network Operations Centre. That security backbone also supports an enterprise data warehouse built in 2025, which now feeds AI-driven forecasting tools the bank uses for liquidity, credit risk and business planning.
Clive Fonseka, the bank’s Chief Executive, traces the growth and record profit numbers to decisions made in the early months of 2023, when the institution was, in his words, “facing a massively challenging situation in terms of liquidity and profitability.” He says they initiated a pivotal transformation in the business model, which shifted the bank’s focus towards private sector lending and away from its traditional reliance on state sector entities. He credits this, disciplined margin management, and careful risk management with driving the historic result.
Fonseka frames 2025’s performance as an outcome, not a starting point. “Longterm investment created the capability, while disciplined execution during 2025 converted that capability into historic financial performance,” he says. He told Echelon that a decade of spending on digital transformation, information security, and self-service infrastructure has given People’s its scale, branding, deposit franchise, and an unmatched branch network.
This runs across his account of the broader evolution of People’s Bank: technology did not replace the branch network so much as extend its reach, turning a physical footprint built over sixty years into the infrastructure for a digital one.
“Our advantage lies in connecting physical reach and digital capability,” Fonseka says, “rather than treating them as competing models,” a distinction that explains both the earnings and the millions of new customers onboarded.
“People’s Bank was founded in 1961 to bring formal banking to communities the existing financial system had largely left untouched, from rural households to small cooperatives that conventional lenders had little interest in serving.”
People’s Bank was founded to serve communities that formal banking had bypassed. Six decades later, has digital delivery changed the type of customer you are reaching, or just the cost of reaching them?
It has changed both, but the more important change is the type of relationship we can now build with customers. Digital delivery has reduced the time and cost involved in serving a widely dispersed population, but it has also enabled us to reach younger, mobile-first customers, microentrepreneurs, migrant-worker families and people whose location, working hours or circumstances previously made conventional banking difficult. Equally, customers who have banked with us for decades can now interact with the Bank more frequently and conveniently. Our original purpose has therefore not changed. What has changed is our ability to fulfil it. Digital banking allows us to take financial inclusion beyond simply opening an account, towards enabling people to transact, save, borrow and manage their finances continuously.
People’s Bank installed its first ATM in 1991, became the first bank connected to the National Common ATM Switch, opened Sri Lanka’s first fully digitalised bank branch in the 2010s, and now has 5.3 million digital product registrations. Across the Bank’s 35-year digital journey, which move helped widen the client base most, and what client success stories can you share?
Each milestone addressed a different barrier. The ATM expanded access beyond banking hours, connection to the common switch expanded interoperability, and the digitalised branch demonstrated what a technology-enabled banking experience could look like. However, the most consequential step was the comprehensive digital transformation initiated in 2015. It brought together digital onboarding, mobile and internet banking, wallet-based payments, self-service banking and the branch network as one connected ecosystem.
Today, a customer can be onboarded via a completely paperless process, and they in turn can use People’s Wave or People’s Web for everyday transactions, and make or receive payments through People’s Pay mobile banking app. A small merchant can begin accepting LankaQR payments without investing in expensive infrastructure. Customers who previously had to travel considerable distances for routine banking can now complete many transactions from their homes or businesses. Those are the success stories that matter most: time saved, opportunities created, and banking made practical for everyday life.
In 2024, People’s Bank achieved the ISO 27001:2022 certification for information security — the most current international standard. What does that certification unlock in terms of what the bank can build or offer that wasn’t possible without it?
The certification should not be viewed as a licence to introduce one particular product. Its greater value is that it provides an internationally recognised foundation on which the Bank can innovate and scale with confidence. It confirms that information security is governed through disciplined policies, clearly assigned responsibilities, risk-based controls, continuous monitoring and independent assessment.
For customers and prospective partners, this provides greater assurance regarding how information is handled and protected. For the Bank, it strengthens our ability to expand digital services, connect with external ecosystems, use data more effectively and introduce new technologies without compromising security or regulatory compliance. In banking, innovation cannot be separated from trust. ISO/IEC 27001:2022 helps us demonstrate that security is embedded in the design of our digital transformation rather than added after a product has been developed.
People’s Bank has a branch network and rural reach that has been unmatched. When you look at your digital numbers, how much of that scale came from the branch network pulling people onto digital platforms rather than digital displacing branches — was it the network that built the user base, or the product?
It was the combination. Our digital platforms had to be convenient, reliable and relevant enough for customers to continue using them. However, the branch network provided something equally important: trust, education and last-mile support. For many customers, particularly outside major urban centres, their first introduction to digital banking came through a member of staff they already knew at their local branch.
“Today, a customer can be onboarded via a completely paperless process, and they in turn can use People’s Wave or People’s Web for everyday transactions, and make or receive payments through People’s Pay mobile banking app.”
“Our Security Operations Centre and Network Operations Centre instead focus on the severity of threats, speed of detection, containment and recovery, system availability and the prevention of customer harm.”
We therefore do not see digital banking as displacing the branch. Routine transactions are increasingly migrating to mobile, internet and self-service channels, while branches are evolving towards advisory services, relationship management, credit, investment and more complex customer needs. The network helped create the digital user base, and the quality of the products converted registration into regular usage. Our advantage lies in connecting physical reach and digital capability rather than treating them as competing models.
People’s Bank produced marketing and deployed branch staff in the East and North in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Digital product registrations also grew from 4.4 million to 5.3 million in a single year. Are these two scenarios related?
They are closely related. Technology becomes inclusive only when customers understand it, trust it, and can use it confidently in the language and context most familiar to them. By communicating in Sinhala, Tamil and English, and by using branch employees who understand local communities, we reduce the practical and psychological barriers that often prevent customers from adopting digital services.
A customer in Jaffna or Batticaloa should not have to visit a branch for every routine transaction once onboarding, verification and digital education have been completed. Payments, transfers, balance inquiries and many service requests can be handled digitally. However, that does not make the branch irrelevant. Customers may still need personal assistance for financial advice, business financing, complex documentation or major life decisions. Our objective is therefore not to remove the branch from the customer’s life, but to ensure that visiting it becomes a choice rather than a necessity.
People’s Bank is participating in the National QR Payment Adoption Programme through People’s Pay, with 740-plus branches behind it. How does a state bank compete in a digital-payment market where the advantage appears to belong to whoever moves fastest?
Speed is important, but speed should not be confused with haste. A systemically important bank must move quickly while maintaining security, resilience, regulatory compliance and public trust. Our approach is to create common technology and control frameworks centrally and then use our national distribution network to scale them rapidly.
With more than 740 branches and service centres, we can combine technology with on-theground merchant acquisition, customer education and after-sales assistance. Through People’s Pay and our participation in national digital-payment initiatives, we can take QR payments beyond digitally sophisticated urban users and place them in the hands of small retailers and service providers throughout the country. A smaller institution may launch a product quickly; our strength is the ability to convert a national initiative into widespread and sustained adoption. Scale, when properly mobilised, can itself become a source of speed.
Euromoney named People’s Bank Sri Lanka’s Best Digital Bank in 2025, and the bank now runs a dedicated Security Operations Center and Network Operations Center providing 24/7 real-time threat detection and monitoring. What internal metric shows that the digital transformation is working, and how many cyber threats does the Bank intercept annually?
“Routine transactions are increasingly migrating to mobile, internet and self-service channels, while branches are evolving towards advisory services, relationship management, credit, investment and more complex customer needs.”
Registrations and downloads are useful indicators, but they are not the final measure of success. We look more closely at active usage, transaction frequency, the proportion of transactions completed through digital and self-service channels, service availability, processing times, customer satisfaction, and the reduction of avoidable visits to branches. Transformation is working when customers choose the digital channel repeatedly because it is easier and more dependable, not merely because they have registered for it.
On cybersecurity, the Bank does not publicly disclose precise annual threat volumes. A single headline number can also be misleading because it may combine automated scans, unsuccessful attempts, false positives and genuinely significant incidents. Our Security Operations Centre and Network Operations Centre instead focus on the severity of threats, speed of detection, containment and recovery, system availability and the prevention of customer harm. The objective is not simply to count alerts, but to identify and neutralise material risks before they affect customers or operations.
People’s Bank deployed AI-driven forecasting and predictive analytics dashboards in 2025, built on a new enterprise data warehouse and advanced data analytics infrastructure. What had to be fixed in the Bank’s data architecture before AI-driven forecasting and predictive analytics could produce reliable results?
Before applying AI, we had to establish a dependable single version of the truth. Like many long-established institutions, the Bank’s information had been generated through different products, channels and operational systems over many years. Data could therefore sit in separate environments, be recorded in different formats or be interpreted differently by different business units.
The enterprise data warehouse initiatives and supporting analytics infrastructure were designed to consolidate these sources, standardise definitions, improve data quality and reconciliation, establish ownership and strengthen metadata, access controls and governance. We also had to ensure that information could be traced back to its source and that business users understood what each data point represented. AI cannot compensate for inconsistent or poorly governed information. Once the underlying architecture became more integrated and reliable, forecasting and predictive dashboards could support better decisions in areas such as business planning, liquidity, credit risk, customer behaviour and resource allocation.
People’s Bank has been recognised for diversity and inclusion alongside its digital awards. How has building a more inclusive culture shaped the services the Bank is able to deliver?
An inclusive workforce is better able to recognise barriers that a less representative organisation might overlook. People’s Bank serves customers across different regions, languages, income levels, age groups and types of enterprise. That diversity must be reflected in how products are designed, communicated and delivered.
Our inclusive culture has contributed to multilingual communication, wider regional outreach and products intended for children, young people, women, migrant-worker families, microenterprises and MSMEs. It has also reinforced the importance of combining digital convenience with human assistance so that customers who are less familiar with technology are not left behind. With women accounting for a substantial majority of our workforce and employees drawn from communities throughout Sri Lanka, different perspectives are present within the institution itself. Inclusion is therefore not simply an employment objective or an award category. It strengthens our ability to understand customers and develop services that work in the realities of their lives.
How much of the historic Rs40.2 billion profit after tax reflects decisions made during 2025, and how much reflects positioning built over the previous decade?
“The best way to describe the achievement is that long-term investment created the capability, while disciplined execution during 2025 converted that capability into historic financial performance”
The result was achieved in 2025, but its foundation was laid in the early part of 2023. Decisions taken since then were certainly important because at that time the bank was facing a massively challenging situation in terms of liquidity and profitability. Then we initiated a pivotal transformation in the business model, which brought the focus onto private sector lending vs lending to state sector entities. This exercise, supported by effective asset-liability repricing, disciplined margin management, growth in core income and careful risk management, contributed directly to the performance. Operating income and net interest income both recorded substantial growth, while capital and liquidity remained comfortably above regulatory requirements.
These decisions produced results because the Bank already possessed a trusted national brand, the country’s broadest customer reach, an extensive deposit franchise and investments made over the previous decade in digital platforms, information security, self-service infrastructure, data capabilities and operational resilience. The branch network and longstanding customer relationships gave us scale; technology made that scale more productive. The best way to describe the achievement is that longterm investment created the capability, while disciplined execution during 2025 converted that capability into historic financial performance.
People’s Bank: 2026 & Beyond
People’s Bank closed 2025 serving 15.2 million customers through 746 branches and service centres, the largest customer base of any commercial bank in Sri Lanka, after adding over 500,000 new customers over the year. Its non-performing loan ratio fell to 4.3%, down from 5.1% in 2024, while its cost-to-income ratio held at 40.1%. Net interest income grew 32.8% to Rs142.4 billion. Net fee and commission income, what the bank earns from fees and services rather than interest on loans, rose to Rs6.4 billion, a source of revenue that doesn’t move with interest rate cycles the way lending margins do. The profit jump was matched by cleaner credit and tighter cost control, not just a good year for interest income.
Alongside Euromoney’s Best Digital Bank award, People’s Bank was named Sri Lanka’s Most Sustainable Bank and its Most Responsive Bank for data management and compliance in 2025, awards that track closer to how the bank runs than to how its app looks, and point in the same direction as the balance sheet.
The bank’s strategy towards the branch network was never to make branches obsolete, but to make them optional, so staff can spend more time advising customers, instead of routine transactions. “Our objective is therefore not to remove the branch from the customer’s life,” Fonseka says, “but to ensure that visiting it becomes a choice rather than a necessity.”