Media Room

CDS Digitalization Initiatives – Launch of Online Account Opening

A special market opening ceremony was organized by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka (SEC) and the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) under the patronage of Hon. Mahinda Rajapaksa, the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to mark the Digitalization of the Sri Lankan Stock Market. The launch event themed ‘Hyper-Leap to the future’ was also attended by the Hon. State Minister Ajith Nivard Cabraal, Hon. State Minister Lohan Ratwatte, Secretary to the Treasury and Ministry of Finance Mr. S. R. Attygalle, and other senior invitees from Foreign Missions in Sri Lanka, Stock Broker Firms, Listed Companies and the Sri Lankan Business Fraternity.

The first phase of digitalization initiative was to convert paper-based statements to electronic form and to facilitate companies listed on the CSE to pay dividends electronically to shareholders.

As part of the second phase of the initiative the CSE launched, on 17 th September 2020, a transformative digital offering through the New CSE Mobile App, an end-to-end digital onboarding and online account opening feature that removes the barriers to entry for new investors and enables any eligible prospective investor around the country to open a CDS account to trade in the market without the need to visit a branch office.

The CDS website was also relaunched with user-friendly interfaces to offer browsers an informative browsing experience covering investor centric information maintained by the CDS.

With the new online account opening feature offered by the CSE Mobile App, prospective local retail investors can now get started with investing instantly with their account opening.