Fintech Forum Sri Lanka celebrates one-year milestone with inaugural AGM

FINTECH Forum Sri Lanka (Guarantee) Ltd., recently marked its first anniversary and inaugural Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Colombo, celebrating a year of uniting the country’s fragmented financial ecosystem under one platform.

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The milestone capped a transformative 12 months for the Forum, which has successfully brought together banks, non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), fintech companies, regulators, and technology innovators in pursuit of the shared vision of positioning Sri Lanka as aregional fintech hub and driving a national shift toward a less-cash economy. When the Fintech Forum launched a year ago, its mission seemed simple but ambitious: to bridge the longstanding gaps between stakeholders working in silos and with competing priorities. A year later, the results speak for themselves.

Chairman Channa de Silva is proud of how the Forum has transformed collaboration across the financial ecosystem from banks and NBFIs to global payment networks, local and international solution providers, startups, and regulators. Together, they are laying the groundwork for a digitally enabled economy and aligning the industry around the same objective: reducing reliance on cash. “The main purpose was to get the entire industry to work together. Previously, everyone was doing their own thing - banks in one corner, finance companies in another, technology firms elsewhere, while fintech and startup companies were nowhere. The Central Bank’s national payments roadmap provided some direction, but it lacked cohesive industry buy-in and participation,” said de Silva.