Business

‘Beyond EPF: Why Sri Lanka’s professional class needs a retirement revolution’

Published

5 months ago

2026/04/23

Ranga Abeynayake, Director/ Deputy CEO

There is a conversation that does not happen often enough in Sri Lankan workplaces, boardrooms, or at the family dinner table. It is not about salaries, or school fees, or the cost of the next car. It is about what happens when the salary stops.

Most professionals in their thirties and forties are managing life reasonably well, or working hard at it. They have mortgages, school fees, the occasional holiday, perhaps a small investment on the side. They know EPF exists. They probably have a passbook somewhere. What most of them have not done is think carefully about what that EPF balance will actually mean when the time comes to stop working.

It is a gap that Ceylinco Life, as Sri Lanka’s life insurance market leader, has spent three decades observing, and one it believes the professional class can no longer afford to ignore.

This is not carelessness. In many ways, it is entirely rational. When you are forty, retirement is two decades away. Two decades is an abstraction, and it is difficult to feel urgency about an abstraction. The problem is that by the time it stops feeling abstract, the window for meaningful action has largely closed.

The EPF Illusion

Let us look at what EPF actually delivers. According to the EPF Annual Report 2024, total EPF benefit payments for the year amounted to approximately LKR 230 billion, including both retirement settlements and authorised pre-retirement withdrawals for housing and medical purposes permitted under the Act. These payments represent workers exiting the system at retirement or upon death, often after decades of contributions. When the retirement-specific payouts are considered against the number of members leaving the Fund, the average EPF balance available at retirement remains modest. Sri Lanka’s standard retirement age for private sector workers is 60, while average life expectancy now stands at approximately 77 to 78 years. That arithmetic alone should give pause: spread across an expected retirement period of fifteen or more years, the typical EPF settlement translates into only a few thousand rupees per month.

For context: a kilogram of rice costs more today than a full meal did a decade ago. A single private hospital consultation can run to LKR 2,000 to 4,000. A monthly prescription for a common chronic condition easily exceeds LKR 10,000. EPF, on its own, does not cover any of this with any real comfort.

And that is before inflation enters the picture, the most patient and persistent force in personal finance. Sri Lanka’s inflationary history is a reminder of how corrosively time erodes purchasing power. A monthly income that feels adequate at retirement can lose a substantial portion of its real value within a decade. The numbers are not punishing by accident. They are simply the mathematics of time and money working against anyone who is not paying attention.

The typical EPF settlement, spread across fifteen or more years of retirement, amounts to only a few thousand rupees a month. At today’s cost of living, that is not a retirement income. It is a problem.

“EPF was never designed to be a complete retirement solution. It is a foundation, and a necessary one, but for the professional class in particular, treating it as the whole answer is a decision that will be felt very painfully in the final decades of life,” says Ranga Abeynayake, Director/ Deputy CEO.

Who Is Most at Risk

It would be a mistake to assume that retirement vulnerability is a problem only for low-income workers. The professional class, middle and upper-middle income earners with stable jobs and reasonable salaries, carries its own version of this risk. In some ways, a more insidious one.

Professionals tend to carry higher lifestyle costs. Their housing is more expensive. Their children attend better-resourced schools. They eat out more, travel more, and spend more on healthcare. When retirement comes, the monthly income gap they need to fill is rarely LKR 50,000. It is more often LKR 150,000 to 200,000 or above, depending on the life they have built.

Yet retirement savings rarely scale in proportion to that income. EPF contributions are capped by salary bands. Many private sector professionals, particularly those who have moved between employers, have fragmented EPF records with inconsistent balances. Business owners and the self-employed may have no EPF at all. And very few, across any of these categories, have sat down and calculated their actual monthly requirement at retirement, adjusted for inflation, healthcare costs, and the possibility of a partner who may outlive them by a decade.

“The professionals we are most concerned about are not struggling today. They have good salaries, reasonable assets, and every intention of sorting out retirement eventually. That word, eventually, is where the problem lives,” says Abeynayake.

The Sandwich Generation Problem

There is one group that deserves particular attention: what demographers refer to as the sandwich generation. These are people, typically in their forties, who are simultaneously supporting their children through education and their ageing parents through retirement or illness. Financially, they are being pressed from both sides, and their own retirement savings are invariably the first thing to be deprioritised.

Sri Lanka’s demographic trajectory makes this harder. By 2042, one in four Sri Lankans will be elderly. That shift places mounting pressure on the working-age population. Many of today’s forty-year-olds will, in practice, be funding two retirements, their parents’ and eventually their own, while simultaneously navigating the most expensive phase of raising children. Without a plan, that combination is a financial storm.

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Business

ComBank hands over fully refurbished wards at De Soysa Hospital for Women

Published

15 hours ago

2026/10/4

Thilina Walpola

Pictured here are the representatives of the Bank and senior officials of the hospital at the ceremonial handing over of the refurbished ward.

The Commercial Bank of Ceylon recently handed over Wards No. 03 and 04 of the De Soysa Hospital for Women, after the completion of a comprehensive renovation project launched in March this year to mark International Women’s Day.

Wards 03 and 04 handle a substantial share of the hospital’s patient load, and account for approximately 2,500 to 3,000 deliveries and 4,000 to 5,000 admissions annually. Their refurbishment was designed to significantly enhance patient care, safety and comfort, and directly benefit thousands of mothers and newborns.

Five Trustees of the Commercial Bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility Trust participated in the formal handing over of the refurbished wards to the hospital authorities. They were Sharhan Muhseen, the Bank’s Chairman, Raja Senanayake, Deputy Chairman, Sanath Manatunge, Managing Director/CEO, Hasrath Munasinghe, Chief Operating Officer, and Prasanna Indrajith, Chief Financial Officer.

Established in 1879, the De Soysa Hospital for Women is the first maternity hospital in Sri Lanka and the second oldest in Asia and is credited with, among others, performing the country’s first caesarean section in 1905 and establishing one of its earliest organised operating theatres in 1907.

The Commercial Bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility Trust, through which this project was implemented, has via its healthcare-related interventions supported more than 100 government hospitals with essential equipment and infrastructure, contributed to emergency medical services through the ‘Adopt an Ambulance’ initiative, and implemented targeted community health interventions such as water storage solutions for families affected by kidney disease.

Business

IIHS expands global nursing pathways

Published

15 hours ago

2026/10/4

Thilina Walpola

Dr. Renuka Jayatissa and Dr. Kithsiri Edirisinghe speaking to the media

The International Institute of Health Sciences (IIHS) Multiversity is expanding its international education programmes with the aim of creating overseas employment opportunities for Sri Lankan nurses and allied health professionals while contributing to foreign exchange earnings.

Speaking to the media during a conference at IIHS Multiversity in Kerawalapitiya, Dr. Kithsiri Edirisinghe, CEO, Co-Founder and Dean of IIHS aid that the institute has established academic partnerships with overseas universities and higher education institutions, including the University of Surrey in the UK, Deakin University in Australia, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, Asia e University in Malaysia and SUNY Canton in the United States.

Under its ‘Study in Sri Lanka, Graduate to the World’ model, students can complete foundational and diploma-level qualifications locally before progressing to international top-up degrees or overseas employment.

Dr Edirisinghe said the model could substantially reduce the cost of obtaining internationally recognised qualifications. It estimates that completing a four-year bachelor’s degree at the University of Surrey in the UK would cost about USD 145,700, including tuition and living expenses, compared with about USD 27,750 through the IIHS pathway in Sri Lanka.

Dr Edirisinghe said the institute’s focus on overseas deployment addressed both Sri Lanka’s economic needs and the growing global demand for healthcare workers.

“Our winning model is producing job-ready, registration-ready healthcare professionals who can seamlessly enter foreign healthcare systems,” he said.

IIHS, which began operations in 2002 as the American College of Health Sciences, established its institutional base in Welisara in 2008 and launched its purpose-built greenfield multiversity campus in 2023.

The institute said it has upgraded the qualifications of more than 5,000 government nurses, supported over 2,500 youth on international employment pathways and trained more than 1,000 allied health professionals. It has also carried out over 250 community health projects.

The institute has identified Germany and Japan among its target markets, with pathways planned for 2,000 nurses for Germany and a one-year preparation programme linked to around 4,000 healthcare positions in Japan.

Dr. Renuka Jayatissa, Vice-Chancellor and a specialist medical doctor, said demographic changes and the growing burden of non-communicable diseases were changing healthcare requirements in Sri Lanka.

Business

Sampath Bank launches Sri Lanka’s first community-powered book discovery platform at Colombo International Book Fair

Published

15 hours ago

2026/10/4

Thilina Walpola

Sampath GPay customers can enjoy 25% cash back on Book Fair purchases

Sampath Bank PLC has launched Sampath Book Finder, Sri Lanka’s first community-powered book discovery platform, giving visitors to the Colombo International Book Fair a faster and more seamless way to find the books they are looking for across the fair’s 150+ stalls, while also opening up new opportunities to discover titles recommended by fellow readers.

Introduced on the opening day of the Colombo International Book Fair on 25 September, Sampath Book Finder brings together digital innovation and the collective knowledge of readers to address a familiar challenge at one of Sri Lanka’s largest literary gatherings, where the scale of the fair can make locating a particular title a time-consuming exercise. When a book proves difficult to locate, visitors can access bookfairtracker.com or scan the designated QR code and submit a request to the community, allowing readers who have already spotted the title to share its location and help others find it without having to search stall after stall.

Commenting on the initiative, Milinda Weerasinghe, Chief Marketing Officer, Sampath Bank PLC, said, “At Sampath Bank, we believe meaningful innovation begins by identifying everyday challenges and creating solutions that make a real difference. Sampath Book Finder brings this thinking to the Colombo International Book Fair by turning the collective knowledge of readers into a real-time digital solution, empowering them to find what they are looking for, discover something new and help others do the same, while making the overall experience more convenient and connected.”

The platform also turns book discovery into a shared experience, allowing visitors to recommend books they encounter by sharing the title, publisher, hall and stall number, which enables fellow readers to discover sought-after titles and recommendations while making it easier to locate them within the fair.

Sampath Bank’s longstanding association with the Colombo International Book Fair also continues in 2026, marking more than 20 years of partnership, with the Bank serving as the Official Banking Partner for this year’s fair. As part of its presence at the event, SampathCards offer 25% cashback for Sampath GPay customers on their purchases and 3 months 0% instalment plans for book purchases via Sampath credit cards, while visitors can also access banking services through the Bank’s physical presence at the fair. Customers registering to open selected Fixed Deposits at the premises will receive an additional 0.25%, adding further value and convenience for visitors.