LOLC, first Sri Lankan company to be recognised with CIO 100 Award

The LOLC Group technology team with the CIO 100 Award

LOLC Holdings PLC has been listed among 100 honourees for 2020 among a list of esteemed global organisations at the annual CIO 100 Awards. It is the first time that a Sri Lankan company has been bestowed with the CIO 100 Award.

Meanwhile, Conrad Dias, LOLC’s former Group Chief Information Officer and current Director/CEO of LOLC Finance PLC and Director LOLC Holdings PLC was selected as one of the 11 CIO Hall of Fame inductees for 2020 out of a pool of global CIOs, becoming the 1st Sri Lankan CIO to be recognised to the Global CIO Hall of Fame.

The CIO 100 Awards celebrates 100 organizations and the teams within them that are using technology in novel ways to deliver innovative and ground-breaking solutions to customers. The award is a global hallmark of enterprise excellence. This year, LOLC was listed among some of the most renowned global corporates such as Bank of America Corporation, General Electric, GSK, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Mastercard, Nestle, Schniederand and many more. According to CIO 100, this year’s honourees exemplify what it means to deliver business value through the innovative use of technology. While announcing the winners, CIO 100’s editors noted that LOLC and other honourees “exemplify what it means to deliver business value through the innovative use of technology. This elite group is creating competitive advantage in their organizations, improving business processes, enabling growth and improving relationships with customers”.

The LOLC Group, which is primarily involved in providing financial services for customers at the bottom of the wealth pyramid has always been at the forefront of technological innovations. As part of this ‘digital-drive’, the company understood the need to disrupt its own business model and adopt technological capabilities to innovate and challenge traditional business models, in order to stay ahead of its competition, both locally and internationally. The foundation was laid with the creation of a ‘digital twin’ to our existing business model, challenging the status-quo and driving towards a digital transformation of our business. The result was the launch of iPay – a platform beyond payments that has revolutionised the Fin-Tech space for both customers and merchants. The iPay ecosystem operates with the vision of democratising payments, money transfers, electronic commerce, banking, lending, insurance, advertising and many other services. It also empowers merchants, providing them with a low-cost digital marketing and selling platform, allowing start-ups and other small scale businesses to play a more active role in the economy. Today, iPay has reached beyond Sri Lanka to other geographies, slowly becoming a regional platform, which can be identified as the LOLC Group’s Fin-Tech Playbook.