A high powered delegation which included Dubai Islamic Bank's Group Chief Executive Officer Dr Adnan Chilwan, Board members and senior management held key meetings with the bank's local management to ascertain the current status and future plans.
The GCEO hosted at two town halls in Karachi and Lahore to a wider audience of more than 1200 staff where he commended the performance given by the bank in 2016, a year that witnessed a two-fold increase in profitability. Whilst highlighting the successes of DIB at both the Group and country level, Dr Chilwan also outlined a detailed 2017 growth strategy for the franchise in the country. This newly defined approach repositions the Bank's medium term plans alongside the transformational growth the Group has achieved in the last few years and effectively aligns the local franchise with DIB Group's overall positioning.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr Chilwan said: "Pakistan is a strategic country for DIB Group and the franchise here is an integral part of our ever-expanding global operations. Over the last few years, our consolidated performance at the group level has been highly impressive despite the challenges in the region with regards to liquidity, lower oil prices and general economic slowdown. A thorough reconstitution of the balance sheet in 2016 which included a revamp of funding sources and deployment avenues has not just resulted in significantly enhanced profitability but has also positioned the franchise to take advantage of the positive macroeconomic environment in the country and grow exponentially."
"At DIB, we are absolutely clear that the reason for our success and that of Islamic finance in general in the UAE, has been the fact that we are overall market players, not niche focused," he added. "This unwavering belief has been critical to the evolution of both Islamic finance as well as the bank in the country where we today enjoy more than 6 percent share of the overall banking sector and nearly 40% of the Islamic pie. As long as we see every customer, corporate or retail, as a potential client, there is only one direction for us - NORTH. I congratulate you all on the bank's recent performance and look forward to your commitment and focus as we together make Islamic banking and finance, a norm rather than an alternative."-PR