CSR PROJECTS · 8 min read
Commercial Bank Reports Its CSR Spend Inside The Audited Accounts. The 1% Rule That Funds It Has Yet To Be Priced.
Commercial Bank of Ceylon’s Annual Report 2025 carries its CSR spending as an audited expense line, reports each education programme as an annual addition and a running total, and names the CSR pages in its assurance annexure. It also states twice that the CSR Trust is funded at 1% of post-tax profit, a figure the report never converts to rupees. What the disclosure credits, how to read the 1%, and what a next report could add.
By the ESGNexus Editorial Team · October 2026 · Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
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Most Sri Lankan companies that publish a community investment figure publish it once, in the sustainability narrative, where no auditor reaches it. Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC does something different. Its Annual Report 2025 reports CSR spending as a line in the audited financial statements. Note 21, ‘Donations including contribution made to the CSR Trust Fund’, shows Rs 351.16 Mn for the Bank in 2025 and Rs 220.79 Mn in 2024 (p.351), and the statutory disclosure of donations under section 168(1)(g) of the Companies Act points to that note (p.258). Whatever else can be said about the figure, it has been audited.
The same report states, twice, how the Trust is funded. The review of material matters describes ‘CSR implemented through the CSR Trust Fund (1% of post-tax profit)’ (p.57), and the community engagement chapter says ‘Funding is anchored to 1% of the Bank’s annual post-tax profit’ (p.129). The report does not convert that sentence into rupees or report performance against it. One per cent of the Bank’s 2025 profit after tax of Rs 58.49 Bn (p.20) is Rs 585 Mn. The three CSR figures disclosed for the year are Rs 200 Mn, Rs 261 Mn and Rs 351 Mn, depending on the boundary. The comparison is ESGNexus arithmetic, not the Bank’s.
The Programme As Commercial Bank Discloses It
The Commercial Bank Corporate Social Responsibility Trust was established in 2004 under a deed of trust (p.80). Its trustees are the Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Managing Director and CEO, Chief Financial Officer, and Deputy General Manager for Corporate Banking (p.130). The deed lists seven objects, from education and health services to tank rehabilitation and cultural heritage preservation (p.130), and the report says the Trust implements all CSR initiatives (p.129).
Education takes roughly 70% of funding (p.129). In 202,5, the Trust deployed Rs 213 Mn to education, Rs 28 Mn to healthcare, and Rs 20 Mn to community projects, for a total of Rs 261 Mn (Figure 48, p.130). Its cumulative ‘investment in society’ rose from Rs 1,180 Mn on 1 January 2025 to Rs 1,444 Mn on 31 December (p.69), of which Rs 1,059 Mn went to education (p.130). Figure 49 maps the cumulative allocation by province and sets each province’s share of the money beside its share of the population: Western Province has received 32% of the funding and holds 28% of the people; Northern Province 9% against 5% (p.131).
The education work comprises three programmes. IT Labs added 67 laboratories with 810 PCs in 2025, taking the total to 429 labs and 3,666 PCs across 379 schools and 51 institutions. STEM classrooms reached 195 after 19 were added; maths labs reached 129 after 6 (p.132). Healthcare took about Rs 29 Mn for diagnostic and treatment equipment at government hospitals (p.134). Relief after Cyclone Ditwah totalled Rs 125 Mn, Rs 119 Mn through national partners, and Rs 6 Mn through branches (p.134), including a Rs 110 Mn Board-approved donation to the Government’s Rebuild Sri Lanka Fund (pp.132, 225).
The Numbers, From Input To Outcome
| Layer | What the 2025 report discloses | Pages |
| Input: money | Rs 351 Mn of donations including the Trust contribution (audited, Note 21); Rs 200 Mn contributed by the Bank to the Trust (Note 62.4.2); Rs 261 Mn deployed by the Trust across education, healthcare and community (Figure 48) | 351, 435, 130 |
| Output: delivered | 67 IT labs with 810 PCs; 19 STEM classrooms; 6 maths labs and 10 seminars; about Rs 29 Mn of hospital equipment; Rs 125 Mn of cyclone relief, including Rs 110 Mn to the Rebuild Sri Lanka Fund | 132, 134 |
| Output: reached | 450,000+ students (IT labs), 220,000+ (STEM classrooms), 100,000+ (maths labs), all cumulative; 667,000 students benefited to date as the headline; about 2,000 people reached through staff school clean-ups after the cyclone | 132, 21, 134 |
| Intermediate outcome | Not disclosed. No usage, attendance or teacher-capacity measure for any facility | – |
| Outcome | Not disclosed. No learning, health or income result. The report defines its outcome orientation as infrastructure built, facilities equipped and beneficiaries reached | 129 |
Source: Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, Annual Report 2025 (year ended 31 December 2025), printed pages as shown. Input figures are Bank, not Group; the Group donations line is Rs 351.21 Mn (p.351).
The input row is unusually full: three bases, two of them inside the audited statements. The output rows are full too. The last two are empty, and the report explains why in its own words. It describes ‘clear outcome orientation – tracking what was enabled in terms of infrastructure built, facilities equipped and beneficiaries reached, rather than describing activity alone’ (p.129). That is a reach measure described as an outcome, and it is the position almost every Sri Lankan CSR report takes.
What Commercial Bank Does Well
Four things. The first is the audited line. The Rs 351 Mn sits in Note 21, on which KPMG issued an unmodified audit opinion (p.4), and the Companies Act disclosure of donations is routed to it. By construction, the CSR figure in the income statement is the company’s own money spent in the year.
The second is the series. The GRI 201-1 table in Annex 5 gives the Community line for five years, Rs 133 Mn, 127 Mn, 434 Mn, 221 Mn and 351 Mn for 2021 to 2025 (p.528), and the two latest figures tie to Note 21. Trend work is possible here in a way it isn’t for a company that publishes a single cumulative total.
The third is assurance that can be traced to a page. KPMG’s limited-assurance annexure names p.528 for GRI 201-1(a) and p.132 for GRI 203-1 (p.536). ESGNexus’s September review of six large issuers found this to be the most-read edition report in which the CSR figure sits inside a named assurance scope.
The fourth is the ladder. Each programme reports what was added in the year and what remains, and the Statement of Capital Position gives opening and closing counts for IT labs (362 to 429) and STEM classrooms (176 to 195) (p.69).
How To Read The 1%
The 1% appears in two wordings, both from the Bank itself. The Annual Report says funding is ‘anchored to’ 1% of post-tax profit (p.129). The Bank’s website, read on 20 October 2026, says ‘The Bank transfers up to 1% of its post-tax profits annually’. ‘Anchored to’ reads as a target; ‘up to’ reads as a ceiling. Neither source states the rupee figure the rule produced in any year, whether measured on Bank or Group profit, or which disclosed CSR figure it refers to.
| Figure, 2025 | Rs Mn (page) | As a share of Bank profit after tax |
| One per cent of Bank profit after tax (Rs 58,488 Mn) | 585 (214) | 1.00% |
| Contribution made by the Bank to the CSR Trust Fund, Note 62.4.2 | 200 (435) | 0.34% |
| Deployed by the Trust during the year, Figure 48 | 261 (130) | 0.45% |
| Donations including contribution to the CSR Trust Fund, Note 21 | 351 (351) | 0.60% |
Source: Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, Annual Report 2025, printed pages as shown. The percentages are ESGNexus arithmetic; the Bank does not publish a rupee equivalent for the 1%.
Two things stand out. The contribution to the Trust was Rs 200 Mn in 2025 and Rs 200 Mn in 2024 (p.435), while Bank profit after tax rose from Rs 54.07 Bn to Rs 58.49 Bn, or 8.16% (p.20). A contribution calculated as 1% of profit would have moved; a fixed Board appropriation would not. The notice of meeting asks shareholders ‘to authorise the Board of Directors to determine donations for the year 2026’ (p.547), which fits the second reading. The Trust also deployed Rs 61 Mn more than it received from the Bank in 2025, and the report does not say where the balance came from.
| Year | Community (GRI 201-1) / Bank profit after tax, Rs Mn | Community as a share of profit after tax |
| 2021 | 133 / 23,606 | 0.56% |
| 2022 | 127 / 22,970 | 0.55% |
| 2023 | 434 / 20,461 | 2.12% |
| 2024 | 221 / 54,073 | 0.41% |
| 2025 | 351 / 58,488 | 0.60% |
Source: Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, Annual Report 2025, Annex 5 (p.528) and Decade at a Glance (pp.214–215). Percentages are ESGNexus arithmetic. The 2023 figure is more than three times its neighbours; the 2025 report does not explain it, and this piece does not treat 2023 as a year in which the 1% was met.
On the Bank’s own numbers, the Community line has sat between 0.41% and 0.60% of Bank profit after tax in four of the last five years. The honest sentence is a disclosure sentence: the report states a funding anchor, does not state its rupee equivalent, and does not report performance against it. The Trust’s governance and the Bank’s intentions are not in question here. What is missing is the sentence that would connect the two halves the report has already printed.
How To Read The Student Figures
The non-financial highlights give ‘667,000 Students benefited to date’ (p.21). The snapshot on p.132 gives three cumulative reach figures, 450,000+ for IT labs, 220,000+ for STEM classrooms and 100,000+ for maths labs, which sum to 770,000. The headline is about 103,000 below the sum of its parts. The likeliest reading is that the Bank removed double counting where one school holds more than one facility, which would be right. The report does not say so, and a reader cannot tell which figure to carry forward. For the record, 450,000 is the reach of the IT Labs programme alone, not the Bank’s total.
Where The Report Does Not Yet Reach
Three boundaries are open. The first is whether the Rs 125 Mn of Ditwah relief sits inside the Rs 351 Mn donations line. The Trust’s community allocation for 2025 was Rs 20 Mn (p.130), so the relief did not pass through the Trust’s deployment; the Rs 151 Mn of donations outside the Trust contribution would accommodate it, but the report does not say. The two presentations of the relief total do reconcile within rounding: Rs 110 Mn plus Rs 8.2 Mn plus Rs 6 Mn on p.132, Rs 119 Mn plus Rs 6 Mn on p.134.
The second is the definition. No page says whether the CSR figure is cash only or also counts equipment given in kind, staff volunteer time or partner funding. The report describes a greenhouse system restored as ‘an in-kind contribution’ and a solar installation at a dairy co-operative funded jointly with the Society (pp. 136, 137) without saying which side of the line either falls on.
The third is results. Every education measure is a facility count or a reach count. The Bank’s own outlook for its social enterprise work says reporting should demonstrate ‘what changed’, not only ‘what was done’ (p.137). Applied to the education programme, the gap is this: 429 laboratories, but no figure for how many are in daily use, how many teachers were trained to run them, or what happened to a single examination result.
What The Next Report Could Add
1. Price the 1%. One line giving 1% of post-tax profit for the year in rupees, the amount transferred, and whether the base is Bank or Group profit.
2. Reconcile the three money figures. Put Note 21, Note 62.4.2, and Figure 48 on one page, with the Ditwah money placed inside or outside each.
3. Say how 667,000 is built. Whether the headline deduplicates the three programme reach figures, and by what method.
4. Publish one usage measure. The share of IT labs operational at year-end, or teachers trained per lab. Either would be the first intermediate outcome in the series.
5. Define the figure. Cash, in-kind, volunteer time, and partner funds: which are included in the Rs 351 Mn.
Where Commercial Bank Sits In The Market
ESGNexus has profiled Sampath Bank, which costs each restored tank and reconciles the rows to its programme total, and MAS Holdings, which prices its community work line by line but not its flagship women’s programme. On money, Commercial Bank’s disclosure is the strongest in the series so far: audited, serial and inside a named assurance scope. On outcomes, it sits where the market sits. ESGNexus’s September review found that across 36 company-years at six large issuers, an auditor gave reasonable assurance over a CSR figure seven times, all before March 2023.
What To Watch
- Annual Report 2026: whether the contribution to the Trust moves from Rs 200 Mn after a year in which profit rose, and whether the 1% is priced.
- Whether ‘anchored to’ or ‘up to’ becomes the single wording across the report and the website.
- Whether the first usage or learning measure appears against the IT labs, now 429 strong.
ESGNexus tracks community investment disclosure across Sri Lanka’s listed and large private companies in its CSR Matrix and will update Commercial Bank’s rows when the 2026 report is filed. The Bank’s SLFRS S1 and S2 reporting is covered in its July 2026 ESGNexus disclosure profile.
Sources & Further Reading
Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, “Annual Report 2025 (Integrated Report and Financial Statements)”, year ended 31 December 2025, CSE filing — cdn.cse.lk (pp.4, 20, 21, 57, 69, 80, 129–137, 214–215, 225, 258, 351, 435, 528, 536, 547)
Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, “Corporate Social Responsibility”, read 20 October 2026 — combank.lk
Companies Act No. 07 of 2007, section 168(1)(g) — Parliament of Sri Lanka
ESGNexus, “Seven Times, an Auditor Vouched for a Sri Lankan CSR Number. All Seven Were Before March 2023”, 16 September 2026 — esgnexus.lk
ESGNexus, “Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC: A Disclosure Profile of Sri Lanka’s Largest Private-Sector Bank”, 17 July 2026 — esgnexus.lk
ESGNexus, “Sampath Bank Publishes The Cost Of Every Tank In Wewata Jeewayak, Now In Its 25th Year”, 30 September 2026 — esgnexus.lk
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Data disclaimer: This article draws on publicly available documents. ESGNexus does not independently verify company disclosures. Errors and omissions excepted.