March 5, 2024, will go down as a red-letter day for the world’s investor relations community. On this day, Commercial Bank of Ceylon PLC, headquartered in Sri Lanka, integrated an AI-powered Annual Report Assistant (AIPARA) to their Annual Report 2023. It is probably the first of its kind.
This innovation addresses a perennial issue and makes reading annual reports a true joy. Gone will be the days when readers had to wade through pages to find information of interest and significance to them. Readers can now simply ask questions from AIPARA and obtain answers.
Commenting on Commercial Bank’s annual report journey, Mr. Sanath Manatunge, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Bank said that integrating AIPARA to the Bank’s Annual Report aligns perfectly with their ongoing investments in digital transformation, technological innovation, and data-driven decision-making. “We commenced our digital annual reporting journey more than fifteen years ago when we started presenting our annual report as an end-to-end HTML so that both human and machine readers could better discover, access and interact with our annual report”, he added.
Chairman of Smart Media The Annual Report Company, Dr. Vijith Kannangara elaborated on the Bank’s digital annual reporting journey. “Our three-decade-long relationship with the Bank and the resultant perfect understanding of our client helped us make this quantum leap in our superior value proposition to the Bank. AIPARA will also help balance the disparate imperatives of conciseness, comprehensiveness, and accessibility in disclosure practices. We also believe that this development will compel corporates to give due attention to providing quality content in their annual reports.
Questions to AIPARA need not necessarily be in perfect sentences. They can range from words like “Profit?” or “Chairman?” to phrases such as “SME initiatives” or “Top 10 shareholders?”, and even to elaborate questions prompting analytical answers. “Is the Bank’s capital under stress?” or “Is the impairment policy of the Bank prudent?”.
AIPARA of Commercial Bank can be accessed through the HTML annual report of the Bank at https://combank2023.annualreports.lk/