2019 Global CFO Excellence Awards

6 Acquisition International - 2019 Global CFO Excellence Awards Softlogic Finance Plc is a premier financial powerhouse engaged in the granting of SME working capital loans, business loans, lease and hire purchase facilities, group personal loans, consumer loans, gold loans, other credit facilities and the acceptance of fixed deposits and the operation of savings accounts. We caught up with the firm’s CFO Sanjeewa Premawardana to find out more about the role he has played in the firm’s success over the years. Softlogic Finance Plc stablished in 1999, Softlogic has since flourished and now has a presence in 36 locations, comprising of 35 branches and one standalone pawning centre. Sanjeewa explores his work as CFO and how he drives the firm to success. “Through my current role as CFO as Softlogic I am providing strategic leadership for the Finance, Treasury and IT functions of the company. I engage with the Central Bank, tax authorities, external auditors, banks and other lending institutions in addition to the communicating with the internal staff. By collaborating with these internal and external teams I am able to fulfil my role and ensure excellence for my current company. “Initially, I was recruited to my current role of the CFO of Softlogic to provide the leadership and the direction to achieve and maintain the service level arrangements a quality financial governance framework. I implemented a control and governance framework by initiating policies and procedures including daily journal and voucher balancing, on time reconciliation framework, financial statement close process, fixed asset and recurrent expenses policies. I E completely restructured the finance department by scaling down the head counts by creating new user roles and eliminating non-value adding and unproductive work force. This was a triumph for me and shows my dedication to providing the firm with the full benefit of my vast financial industry expertise.” Prior to working for Softlogic Sanjeewa honed his skills with other financial firms, as he discusses. “Personally, I started my career with Sampath Bank at a remote branch which is not connected to the bank's central computer system. It operated on 100% manual banking operations and I learnt the basics of customer ledger maintenance, interest computations, GL postings, consumer lending and impairment provisioning. Afterwards I joined the Finance Team of the Sampath bank and introduced automated systems for finance statement generation, Central Bank reporting, MIS reporting and budgeting. In addition to that I implemented a pricing formula for lending and deposits, branch wise balance sheet concept and a bottom up budgeting process. “Later I moved to Cargills Bank to support the opening of the bank after completing a 16-year journey at the Sampath Bank. I established the Finance department and implemented a financial reporting, MIS reporting, budgeting and loan pricing mechanism for the bank.” As he looks to the future Sanjeewa is excited for his prospects as he seeks to grow his profile and skillset throughout 2019 and beyond. “Overall, I would like to position and place myself in a strategically important place which helps to elevate my country's journey towards its development journey. As such, my future aspiration is to get engaged with the national policy-making entities to share my experience and exposure. This will remain my core focus over the coming years.” Company: Softlogic Finance Plc Name: Sanjeewa Premawardana Address: 13, De Fonseka Place, Colombo 04, Sri Lanka Telephone Number: 0094 112 359700 Web Address: www.softlogicfinance.lk Financial Services CFO of the Year - Sri Lanka