Boost Group CEO, Sheyantha Abeykoon hailed Executive of the Year - Financial Technology at Malaysia Management Excellence Awards 2025

His ability to combine vision with humility, growth, and responsibility made him stand out.

Sheyantha Abeykoon, the Group CEO of regional fintech leader Boost, was honoured as the Executive of the Year - Financial Technology at the Malaysia Management Excellence Awards 2025 for successfully guiding the company with a clear strategic focus on using technology to advance financial inclusion across Southeast Asia.

At the heart of his leadership is a clear and human-centred vision to scale Boost into a regional digital bank group that delivers meaningful financial and banking services to customers who need them. For him, this vision has always been about more than technology or market share; it is about restoring opportunity and choice to individuals and businesses.

He has executed this vision over the past 24 months through four major pillars: launching homegrown digital bank Boost Bank with a pioneering embedded banking feature, empowering micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) through data-driven lending, and expanding Boost’s playbook into underserved regional markets such as Indonesia, Cambodia, and Bangladesh.

Under the Group CEO’s leadership, the company has rapidly scaled consumer and SME financing, whilst embedded banking has become a core user acquisition engine for Boost Bank that contributed 80% of users being onboarded via Boost eWallet. For MSMEs, he has championed alternative-data lending, enabling close to US$1b in loan disbursements.

Sheyantha is known for his hands-on leadership, being deeply involved in product planning, strategy, stakeholder management and regulatory engagement. He emphasises collaboration, transparency, and empowerment, building a culture anchored in agility, customer-centricity, and responsible innovation that matters most for financial inclusion.

Moreover, his forward-looking approach and commitment to artificial intelligence (AI)-powered decisioning, automation, and user-first design have positioned Boost as a technological leader, evidenced by award-winning AI initiatives for SME loan origination and strong, responsible financing products like Boost PayFlex™.

“Sheyantha has shown that it is possible to build a leading regional fintech business whilst staying true to the mission of financial inclusion. He has transformed Boost into a platform that serves individuals and MSMEs, not just in Malaysia but across Southeast Asia, and he has done so by listening, empowering, and inspiring his teams,” the company said.

Malaysia Management Excellence Awards recognises the nation’s visionary leaders, forward-thinking innovators, and high-performing teams whose strategic initiatives have delivered business results and contributed significantly to their company’s growth and success.

The Malaysia Management Excellence Awards is presented by Asian Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2026 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's employee engagements and management initiatives, please contact Danica Avila at [email protected].