Pakistan

The 32nd annual Asiamoney Brokers Poll is a Vox Populi poll that identifies the leading brokerages for equities research, sales and trading in Asia. Voters are institutional investors who represent fund management firms, wealth managers, hedge funds, pension funds, and insurance companies that trade in Asia.

Meezan has rapidly become one of Pakistan’s leading banks, thanks to a couple of early acquisitions.

Asiamoney has selected two senior women who have advanced in Asia’s highly competitive banking industry. Their stories throw light on how the sector is tackling gender diversity.

A much-needed and long-overdue shake-up is starting to pay off, but National Bank of Pakistan’s chief executive is still fighting hard against the old ways of doing business.

Allied Bank (ABL) has long put both employees and the wider public at the top of its corporate and social responsibility (CSR) agenda. That was no different in 2020 during the Covid crisis.

For the third year in a row, JS Bank is Asiamoney’s best bank for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) because of its unwavering focus on this part of the market during a particularly tough period.

Pakistan’s banks, like others worldwide, faced a big test in 2020 when Covid struck and disrupted the traditional way to bank and do business. But numerous banks managed to capitalize on the pivot to online and digital banking, thanks to the efforts made ahead of the pandemic to modernize services.

Credit Suisse, which has operated in Pakistan since the 1990s, has an enviable relationship with the Ministry of Finance, having arranged the government’s first loan in 2013.