Bangladesh
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The government’s ambitious plan for full digitalization could reduce crime and increase tax revenue. It could also lead to greater innovation in the banking sector.
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The nine years since Dhaka Bank incorporated its investment banking arm have been as action-packed as its executive team could have anticipated in 2013. Indeed, Dhaka Bank, led by chief executive Emranul Huq, epitomises much of the transformation seen in Bangladesh in the last decade.
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UCB Investment, a wholly owned subsidiary of commercial bank United Commercial Bank, was formed in 2011 but only received its licence to start operations as a fully fledged investment bank in October 2020. The period that followed was anything but typical, thanks to global turmoil and uncertainty. Through it all, the bank kept its cool to serve customers – and secure the Asiamoney best corporate bank award for 2022.
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It is easy to be cynical about environmental, social and governance, but Green Delta Capital is all the proof sceptics need that environmentally friendly finance is a sound business proposition. Founded in 2010, the investment bank has quickly become one of the fastest growing in Bangladesh.
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Eastern Bank, run by chief executive Ali Reza Iftekhar, has been a consistent presence in Asiamoney’s annual best bank awards. Over the last year, the firm went the extra mile to remind the market why.
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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.
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Standard Chartered’s 117-year uninterrupted presence in Bangladesh makes for quite a sales pitch. So does being the only multinational, universal bank in an economy tipped to grow 7% in 2022, even as inflation, geopolitical turmoil and further bouts of Covid-19 cloud the outlook.
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Banks tempted to protest over a non-bank winning the top digital solutions award can take solace from the way this particular fintech phenomenon is turning the heads of many of the globe’s most important financiers.
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After reading all the studies he could find about the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion, Syed Mahbubur Rahman decided to do something about it. The Mutual Trust Bank chief executive endeavoured to make his bank an exemplar in Bangladesh.
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Over the last two-plus decades, the IDLC group has developed impressive footholds in corporate, retail and capital market segments. But what impressed Asiamoney the most is how the firm’s small and medium-sized enterprise business was put to the test over the course of the pandemic – and came out with flying colours. It is our pick for best bank for SMEs in Bangladesh in 2022.
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The nation has navigated the Covid-19 pandemic better than many of its peers, but its luck won’t last unless it brings in some big, meaningful reforms.
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Fintech firm bKash has revolutionized Bangladesh’s payments industry in the 11 years since it was founded. But its CEO still has more tricks up his sleeve.
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The Bangladeshi investment bank seems closer to a supranational lender in terms of aspirations.
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During the pandemic, Bangladesh’s Eastern Bank proved that it was in safe hands. The company’s chief executive is now turning his attention back to growth.
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Bangladesh was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Following safety measures is a luxury if these stop people going to work, especially in a country where the poverty rate is about 20%. The City Bank, under the leadership of managing director and chief executive Mashrur Arefin, stepped up to help the country face this new threat.
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IDLC started financing small and medium-sized enterprises in 2006 with six employees based out of a dedicated SME branch in the Bogra District of northern Bangladesh. The firm has grown to include a network of 28 SME branches and 442 staff, and contributes 37% of IDLC’s total loan portfolio.
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The City Bank took the initiative and made the best of a bad situation in 2020, introducing a series of innovative digital products and services, as well as revamping its mobile banking platform.
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Few will be surprised by this choice. Standard Chartered has been operating in the Bangladesh for 116 years, making it the oldest foreign bank in the country. It is part of the firmament in a way no other foreign bank can hope to emulate.
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Dhaka Bank has been focused on corporate banking since its inception 25 years ago. It has spent much of that time fostering relationships with Bangladesh’s large business conglomerates and now counts most of them among its client base.
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Eastern Bank is known for its corporate banking expertise serving Bangladeshi industry, but in the past year it has also made a big effort to broaden its services for retail investors in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
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No other lender in Bangladesh can compete with The City Bank’s priority banking division, Citygem. This is the third year in a row that the lender, now run by chief executive Mashrur Arefin, has secured this award, and it shows no sign of being bested by its peers, or of resting on its laurels. Each year, the Citygem team finds new services to offer to a customer base that numbers more than 4,500, and which is only set to grow further in line with Bangladesh’s expanding economy.
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Banks in Bangladesh were struggling with poor performance even before coronavirus spread to the country; the pandemic is worsening the impact of a recent policy misstep.
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The payments company has attracted a who’s who of investors – but as competition rises, its founder is now pushing for more, not less, regulatory oversight.
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If there’s any bank in Bangladesh that wears its values on its sleeve, it’s the one Selim Hussain has directed since 2015.
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No surprise here for regular Asiamoney readers. Although Eastern Bank was incorporated in 1992, its run as Bangladesh’s one-stop solution for corporate customers dates back to 2002. Since then, it has consistently buttressed its reputation for innovative products and services, a quality portfolio and sustainable growth.
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Anyone searching for Asia’s next boom town could do worse than check Naser Ezaz Bijoy’s whereabouts. His stints in Vietnam, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates dovetailed nicely with those countries’ transitions from development backwaters to investment darlings.
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Few economic peers are going digital as rapidly as Bangladesh. Even in this disruptive context, 25-year-old Prime Bank is a stand out. A bank that is, in the words of chief executive Rahel Ahmed, “moving faster than technology.”
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Once again this year, Bangladesh’s leading non-bank financial institution is a shoo-in for top lender in the small and medium-sized enterprises sector.
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When this 37-year-old institution won Asiamoney honours in the past, it was in premium services. No other local lender can compete with its priority banking division, Citygem. More recently, though, the bank led by chief executive Mashrur Arefin is impressing us with its corporate social responsibility efforts.
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The Association for Social Advancement has come a long, long way since its humble beginnings in the remote village of Tapra 42 years ago.
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Bangladesh's Grameen Bank pioneered the fields of microfinance and microcredit, earning founder Muhammad Yunus a Nobel Peace Prize and helping shape the Asian financial system.
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Last year was a tough one for Bangladesh’s banks. Political instability took a toll in an otherwise strong economy, and many lenders experienced a dip in profits and an increase in bad loans. But one lender sailed serenely through the storm in 2018, staying above the fray.
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Since its inception in Bangladesh in 1978, ASA has been one of the world’s great microfinance pioneers, promoters and innovators.
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It isn’t every day you find a bank willing to do its bit for working women (and men) in the world’s oldest profession, so let’s hear a round of applause for HSBC. The British lender takes its commitment to corporate social responsibility seriously everywhere it operates. But it goes a step further in Bangladesh, where it focuses on sustainable finance and supply chains, and on improving wider financial literacy and general employability.
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Founded in 1985 under the aegis of multilateral institutions including the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development and the IFC, IDLC Finance really found its role in life in 2006, following the launch of its small and medium-sized enterprise business. Since then, it has become Bangladesh’s most influential provider of SME services. Outstanding loans to SMEs amounted to $415 million at the end of 2018, up from $350 million in the previous year. At the end of 2018, SME lending comprised 43% of its portfolio, against 21% a decade ago.
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That Bangladesh as a country is managing to shed its image as a fintech laggard has much to do with a seminal decision made by Brac Bank in 2011. The lender boasts an impressive range of own-brand digital services.
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Standard Chartered is hands down the best foreign bank operating in Bangladesh. It opened its first branch there in 1948, acquired ANZ Grindlays in 2000, and snapped up a commercial banking business from American Express five years later. It now boasts 24 branches and booths dotted around seven cities, employing 2,100 people and providing services ranging from credit cards and auto finance to personal loans and Islamic banking.
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Six local and foreign bank chief executives nominated Eastern Bank for this award. No other names were offered up by the half dozen, and for good reason. Eastern Bank has for years been widely viewed as the best local provider of quality corporate banking services.
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A new chief executive is busy rolling out a bold strategy to make it the country’s biggest lender, with the help of some of the savviest names in the business – bKash, Grameenphone and China’s Ant Financial Services.
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Kamal Quadir has transformed financial services for the poor in Bangladesh with bKash. The mobile payments system is shaping up to be a great success story. Here’s how a child of independence put it together.
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Citygem is the private banking operation of The City Bank, run by chief executive Sohail R K Hussain. But nationalism compels Bangladesh’s central bank not to allow private banking as much of the world knows it, so in Bangladesh it’s called priority banking.
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As befits a bank that springs from a charity, corporate and social responsibility is part of Brac Bank’s DNA. And in a year where Bangladesh endured the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, Brac Bank stepped up to help, directly raising funds to assist the millions of Rohingya refugees escaping persecution in neighbouring Myanmar, and by plugging domestic aid gaps for a government diverted by the Rohingya crisis.
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As Bangladesh’s vast battalions of small and medium-sized businesses carry their country up the development scale from poverty to middle income, François de Maricourt and his team at HSBC Bangladesh have positioned to helping them on that journey.
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Like Google, Skype and Hoover, the ubiquity and ease of the bKash mobile payments system across Bangladesh is such that the platform has become a verb.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same. That might be the mantra at Standard Chartered Bangladesh under new chief executive Naser Ezaz Bijoy, in his first year in the chair at Bangladesh’s pre-eminent foreign bank.
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Chief executive Ali Reza Iftekhar has made Eastern Bank the go-to destination for Bangladeshi corporates and foreign multilaterals addressing the country’s chronic infrastructure shortage.
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Brac Bank’s straight-talking chief executive, the Standard Chartered veteran Selim Hussain, hit the ground running when he arrived in November 2015.
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Dutch-Bangla Bank, founded in 1996 by a group of Bangladesh based entrepreneurs, working in cohort with the Netherlands based Development Finance Company, has always taken its responsibilities in the field of corporate social responsibility seriously.
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Wealth management is still a young business in Bangladesh. If you are local and wealthy, your assets are often managed elsewhere, by private bankers in the likes of London, Dubai, or Singapore. But some lenders are seeking to make an impact, rolling out quality wealth-management services to high net-worth and mass-affluent clients.
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Standard Chartered stands head and shoulders above its foreign peers in Bangladesh. HSBC has a solid local operation and a few other pan-Asian lenders are here in spirit, but no one can compete with the London-based, emerging market-focused lender.
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Brac Bank’s offering is not just devoted to small and medium-sized enterprises. There are good retail and corporate banking divisions at work here, too. But finding thriving Bangladeshi corporates and extending finance to them is what Brac Bank has been doing better than any of its domestic peers since it was founded 16 years ago.
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There are plenty of candidates for this award – The City Bank and Eastern Bank both have strong digital offerings and are installing upgrades to keep themselves ahead of the pack – but Standard Chartered is a cut above the rest in the digital world.
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Eastern Bank, led by Ali Reza Iftekhar, remains one of Bangladesh’s best-run lenders. Its balance sheet is strong – it boasts one of the country’s lowest ratios of non-performing loans, at 2.69% as of the end of 2016. And its credit rating is solid, with Moody’s confirming the bank’s Ba3 rating with a stable outlook in February 2017, for a second straight year.
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Bangladesh has a lot of banks, 57 in total. Many are small and troubled, but Dhaka also hosts the headquarters of a handful of first-rate banks that invest in themselves, their customers and the country around them.
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A management shake-up and a renewed focus on financing small and medium-sized enterprises have boosted Brac Bank’s performance. But CEO Selim Hussain says he is nowhere near finished when it comes to unleashing the bank’s potential.