Cambodia’s largest bank has odd roots.
ACLEDA, pronounced “A-C-Leda”, is short for the “Association of Cambodian Local Economic Development Agencies.” It hearkens back to the bank’s roots as a development NGO, set up in the immediate aftermath of Cambodia’s civil war in 1993.
Even after becoming a full-fledged commercial bank in 2003, ACLEDA, one of just two Cambodian companies on Fortune’s Southeast Asia 500, had to deal with trust issues in the developing Southeast Asian economy.
In Channy, who has run ACLEDA since 1993, remembers customers would stop by the bank every morning just to check on things, even if they had as little as $20 in the bank’s accounts.
“I asked them: Why do you come to the office every morning?” Channy said in an interview with Fortune. “They say: Your office is smaller than my home. I want to make sure you exist!” he laughed.
In 2007, ACLEDA invested in a proper headquarters, housed in a five-story office building in the country’s capital, Phnom Penh. Channy credits that investment to unlocking “exponential” growth in deposits and loans.
ACLEDA is now Cambodia’s largest bank, with 260 offices across the country. It’s also one of Cambodia’s largest providers of microfinance, small loans to Cambodian customers often used to establish small enterprises. Cambodia still has a significant unbanked population, with the World Bank estimating that just a third of the country had a bank account in 2021.
Yet the practice of microfinance has been criticized by activists who blame it for increasing debt levels among the poor without providing much in the way of real economic benefit.
Channy bristles when asked about such criticism, which he calls “political.” ACLEDA, as a major Cambodian financial institution, has been cited in NGO reports targeting the microfinance sector in the country.
The ACELDA president points to the bank’s B+ rating by S&P as proof that ACLEDA takes how it treats customers seriously.
“We cannot grow without our customers,” Channy said. “We sell to them now, we want to sell to them again, and we want to sell to them in the future.”
One of just two Cambodian companies on the Southeast Asia 500
ACLEDA Bank is No. 315 on the Southeast Asia 500, Fortune’s ranking of the region’s largest companies by revenue. Fortune’s rankings cover both public companies and private companies that choose to disclose audited financial statements. The other Cambodian company on the list is hospitality company NagaCorp, ranked at No. 449.
Channy, 64, has served as the bank’s president since it became a for-profit organization in 2000, but he’s been involved in ACLEDA from its beginnings as a non-profit development organization, with just $613,000 in seed capital.
He remembers the non-profit decided to go commercial in 1998 when the group first broke even. Channy appealed to development institutions around the world, including the International Finance Corporation and European development banks to front more money to turn ACLEDA into a for-profit company. ACLEDA transformed to a commercial entity in 2000, and then into a full-fledged commercial bank in 2003 with $13 million in capital.
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The bank’s grown significantly since then, and now has $10.4 billion in total assets. That, of course, is a tiny sliver of what Southeast Asia’s largest banks hold: Singapore’s DBS Bank, No. 10 on Fortune’s ranking, holds about $616 billion in total assets.
In addition to its Cambodia presence, ACLEDA also has several dozen offices in Laos and Myanmar, two other developing economies in Southeast Asia. ACLEDA’s presence in Myanmar, which has been in a civil war since a 2021 military coup, is limited to the country’s commercial hub of Yangon, according to Channy.
Can Cambodia attract investment?
Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia, with a GDP per capita of around $2,500 (in nominal terms) in 2024. The average across ASEAN nations is around $5,800.
Still, Channy is bullish that Cambodia will become a middle-income country by 2030 and a high-income country two decades later. The World Bank currently defines Cambodia as a “lower middle income” country; Cambodia will need to increase its gross national income per capita to $4,516 to be classed an “upper middle income” country.
Cambodia has been a minor beneficiary of supply chains shifting away from China, and is now a hub for textiles, solar-panel manufacturing, and even semiconductors, exporting to the U.S. market. Yet in November, the U.S. imposed new tariffs on solar panels made in Southeast Asia, including Cambodia, in response to dumping allegations from U.S. manufacturers.
The U.S. is also wary of Cambodia’s close ties to China. Beijing and Chinese companies have invested heavily in Cambodian infrastructure, including the country’s Ream Naval base. The U.S. has maintained an arms embargo against Cambodia since 2021; that export control, in turn, put the Southeast Asian country in the dreaded “Tier 3” category in the Biden administration’s rules on AI last month, otherwise reserved for strategic rivals like Russia and China. Tier 3 are effectively banned from getting AI chips from U.S. companies like Nvidia.
The Asian Development Bank expects Cambodia’s economy to grow by 6.0% in 2025, pointing to a “rebound in the manufacturing sector–especially garments, footwear and travel goods,” as well as revived strength in agriculture and tourism.
“Cambodia offers a rich culture, and open arms to investors,” Channy said, citing the country’s investment law that allows for full foreign ownership. He also cited Cambodia’s links to other ASEAN countries, like Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand, as well as the country’s deep sea port.
And there’s one more benefit Channy points to: Cambodia has a dollarized economy, as the U.S. dollar circulates alongside the Cambodian riel: “You don’t need to worry about foreign exchange!”
