City Bank
City Bank’s chief executive Mashrur Arefin likes to think of the lender as the digital trendsetter in Bangladesh. He has a point: few institutions have harnessed the Covid-19 crisis with greater aplomb to put banking services in the hands of tens of millions of households sheltering at home.
But City Bank’s bigger contribution over the last 12 months has been more of the analogue kind: looking out for the 165 million or so people living in the country, making it Asiamoney’s best bank for CSR in 2022.
This isn’t exactly a change of direction for the institution. For more than 40 years, City Bank has sought to be a key banking partner for Bangladeshis of all generations, while playing a vital role in the country’s socio-economic development.
Case in point: the bank’s focus on providing health support as the Covid-19 crisis upended the economy. City Bank executives contacted local non-government organizations to figure out where the systemic cracks were. The bank became the top supplier of food and other goods, as well as medical oxygen cylinders.
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