CDB accoladed at ACCA Sri Lanka Sustainability Reporting Awards 2017
With sustainability being the axis on which its business model is founded, Citizens Development Business Finance PLC (CDB) pushed the boundaries of sustainability reporting that much further to etch yet another milestone by being crowned Joint Winner at the ACCA Sri Lanka Sustainability Reporting Awards 2017.
Rewarded and recognised for its disclosure mechanisms which in turn makes the company transparent, accountable and responsive to stakeholders, CDB won in the finance and insurance sector, in which last year, it was adjudged Runner-up. Conforming to Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines which calls for reporting to acknowledge and explain the economic, environmental and social impact on both internal and external stakeholders, CDB proved to the panel of judges that it walks the talk of sustainability with a top-down bottom-up approach.
The Judges’ Report presented kudos to some of CDB’S unique reporting initiatives which evaluated over sixty reports on the criteria of completeness, credibility and communication. It detailed the positives in CDB’S report as a Sinhala and Tamil message from the Chairman and MD is a novel idea which speaks for an intention to communicate with a larger segment of stakeholders. The business model covers all value enablers. The vision is very wide and includes reaching out to the living standards of all citizens. Stakeholder engagement is given in relation to their concerns. A ‘sustainability sense’ presented is a good model and embraces elements on a comprehensive basis. Social/relationship Capital is set out in the form of inputs and outputs. The amounts expended on CSR projects are shown.” The fact that CDB is also a certified Carbon Verified entity, the first in the financial institution sector to be certified in the whole of South Asia and gave comprehensive coverage of its GHGS in the report, added impetus to the company’s scores.
“We have always been a company that has been sustainability conscious,” stated MD/CEO Mahesh Nanayakkara. “Our business model is based on our long term objectives combining with our organisation’s policies to ensure that we meet our sustainable development goals. These are all well documented, assessed, evaluated and compared with set targets and realistic achievement. This to us is an important process as it enhances transparency and makes us accountable to our stakeholders as we emphasise immensely on forging and nurturing long term relationships with our stakeholders.” CDB’S constant quest to trail-blaze, whether in presenting customers with pioneering products and digitally driven solutions or its social focus to ensure inclusive empowerment by helping disadvantaged segments of society or through its strong green ethos that permeates the message of environmental responsibility adds weight to its unwavering focus on corporate stewardship.
For Nanayakkara, the best practices introduced by CDB is all about taking that corporate stewardship that much further. “We are now an award-winning total financial solutions provider standing tall among the top seven NBFIS in Sri Lanka. This also means that we have a responsibility to be a role model for the industry and instigate change for the better in a holistic sense. Our corporate mindset has always been to look ahead and adopt global best practices which would pave the way for others to follow, a paradigm we have been charting since inception. When we emerged Runner-up last year, it gave us immense encouragement to push boundaries a little further in our reporting process and it certainly is very rewarding that the processes we applied have borne fruit. We are very proud to be presented the crown in the very expansive category of Finance and Insurance Sector at these prestigious awards held in Sri Lanka and worldwide which spans 25 countries with over 3,000 entities worldwide reporting on sustainability practices.” Citizens Development Business Finance PLC (CDB) is a public quoted leader in the non-banking financial institution sector in Sri Lanka with an islandwide 70 branch network that is driven by a state of the art technological platform that has revolutionised the way financial transactions are performed in Sri Lanka.