Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you most probably have heard of Meezan Bank. Posturing as “the Premier Islamic Bank,” its rise has been nothing short of meteoric. Conceptualised in the mid-1990s by its Founding CEO, Irfan Siddiqui, it has fought an uphill battle in introducing and developing the field of Islamic banking in Pakistan. However, it grew so much and built such a strong reputation that it now ranks among the top five banks in Pakistan. Period. And a story like that certainly deserves to be chronicled.
Sibtain Naqvi has taken this task on. In Unconventional: The Bank No One Saw Coming, he has written a story of Meezan Bank, from the seeds of its inception coming up to the present day. As Naqvi points out in his Author’s Note, “Irfan Siddiqui’s personal journey is so intertwined with Meezan’s history that it’s hard to separate the two”. Unconventional is a portrait of both the man and the bank.
Irfan had trained as an accountant in the UK, and after working in the Middle East with Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) in the 1980s, shifted back to Pakistan to be with his parents. He had given up a glittering career to move to a smaller and weaker market. Deciding to settle permanently in Pakistan, he soon became the General Manager of Pakistan Kuwait Investment Company (PKIC). PKIC was a dead horse – almost. However, Irfan was able to make a profitable turnaround in three years. Success shone upon his shoulders. Things were going well.
Yet once again, Irfan found himself at a crossroads. His wife, Dr. Ghazala, had started taking Quran classes and had learned that riba, or interest charged on loans, was forbidden in Islam. Irfan initially dismissed this by saying that the type of interest he dealt with was not prohibited. Yet, the domestic discussion persisted, and the couple eventually consulted Mufti Taqi Usmani, a renowned religious authority on the matter. His pronouncement was clear: it was indeed prohibited. Irfan was convinced, and was even willing to give conventional banking up altogether in order to not breach the religious injunction.
It is in these moments, where Naqvi shows what was happening behind the scenes at the personal level, that his narrative is moving. His reliance on interviews with key players contextualises key decisions in Meezan’s history by linking them to the motivations of the individuals making these decisions. For example, there is a palpable sense of Irfan’s willingness to take risks after his discussion with Mufti Taqi Usmani. Naqvi quotes Irfan: “The decision was to quit conventional banking and then see what to do. I told my wife that we aren’t short on money as we have our savings and I have a simple lifestyle, so we can easily live on less if we have to.”
So, once Irfan decided that he needed to give up conventional banking, he started to think about ways to bring what he does in line with his beliefs. And he hit upon the idea of opening an Islamic bank in Pakistan. There were successful precedents in the Middle East, but the idea still came with a significant risk, especially since a failed attempt had already been made in Pakistan in the 1980s. Irfan, however, through a mixture of persuasiveness, connections, and sheer luck was able to raise PKR 1 billion in order to start Al Meezan Investment Management in 1994.
The license to become a scheduled bank, however, was tough to obtain. Regulatory approvals were slow as the doomsday in coming. Eventually, Irfan found himself in a lucky position. The Pakistan government was looking to meet important people in the Middle East to attract foreign direct investment, and Irfan’s contact book was needed. One of those contacts in his meetings was able to convince a government official to expedite the license. Al Meezan Investment Bank (AMIB) was finally formed in 1997.
The business was slow, initially. Yet, with their emphasis on frugality and cutting costs, they were able to stay afloat. Since AMIB was the first Islamic bank in Pakistan, they not only had to educate their clients on Shariah-compliant banking, but also had to compete against banks that could offer better rates on liabilities and deposits. Meezan, therefore, had to both create conditions where it could thrive, and improve its service in order to stay competitive. At the same time, since they were serving almost exclusively corporate clients, Irfan’s ambition of spreading Islamic banking through Pakistan was still beyond grasp.
The opportunity for expansion came in 2002, when AMIB was able to acquire the Pakistan operations of Société Générale (SocGen), which was exiting the country. Naqvi provides some interesting details about the story of this acquisition, the hesitation on part of AMIB management, the different strategies they explored, and the advice of Dr. Ishrat Hussain in helping the process. In acquiring SocGen’s portfolio, AMIB was able to integrate their commercial banking operations, and consequently was able to expand its offerings to the general population. AMIB now became the recognizable Meezan Bank Limited.
Once they had completed the acquisition, there were a total of five branches – four came from SocGen, and the remaining one was AMIB’s headquarters in Karachi. Total assets post-acquisition were PKR 4 billion. After the complex process of converting SocGen’s assets into a Shariah-compliant form, Meezan set on its path. The growth was steady, but nothing remarkable. Meezan had to overcome scepticism around Islamic banking, while at the same time inculcating a belief in its need among its employees. In fact, enthusiasm for Islamic banking was as important a factor as technical competencies in being hired at Meezan. The bank’s operations were also overseen by a Shariah board to ensure whatever it did strayed not from its vision.
It is adherence to this vision – that of establishing “Islamic banking as the banking of first choice” in order to lead to public good – that Meezan’s commitment shines through the book. The book could, however, have benefitted from a short primer on what exactly Islamic banking was, considering it’s the heart of the matter. It would have provided some much-needed context for the lay reader.
In any case, the story of growth continued, with Meezan launching new Islamic banking products and branches. At the same time, it started investing in various local corporations and MNCs, such as General Tyre, Rafhan Maize, Gul Ahmed, Engro, Nishat etc. Starting initially with a goal of opening 20 branches, the post was shifted in 2005 to the target of 100 branches. Concurrently, the bank was investing heavily in technology, people, and educating both prospective clients and the general population. It also focused heavily on making processes easier and efficient for its clients in order to improve its service. For instance, it once approved a PKR 2 billion credit for Tetra Pak Pakistan in one day. Its reputation was strengthened by the fact that it aimed to be the best in service across all sorts of banking. The ‘Islamic’ factor, although important, took a backseat to excellent service through which Meezan was able to build trust in its brand.
By 2012, Meezan had become the 8th largest bank in Pakistan by branch network, now totalling over 350 from the initial five. Profits after tax had risen to over PKR 1 billion from PKR 223 million in 2002.
Another opportunity for expansion came with the acquisition of HSBC’s Pakistan operations. The merger was finalised in 2014, and although HSBC’s operations were not too large, they provided a valuable reputational boost, provided “international banking practices and operational efficiencies,” and brought in newer clients.
In the decade since, Meezan has grown at an astonishing speed. By 2024, the number of branches had grown from 428 to 1051. After tax profits during the same period rose from PKR 4.6 billion to PKR 84 billion. Total deposits grew from PKR 380 billion to 2585 billion in the decade. It has become the most profitable bank in Pakistan, and the second largest by market cap.
In telling the story of this rise, in the chapter “The Dominant Decade: 2014 to 2024”, the book becomes a little flat. Instead of the narrative that had sustained interest in leading up to Meezan’s founding and its initial decade, there are few substantial hooks to gather the reader’s attention here. Granted not every part of the book could be similar, or as dramatic as the two fires in Meezan’s previous office at the PNSC building in Karachi, the narrative thrust is what keeps the reader’s interest intact. Here, instead, Naqvi prioritizes listing out in detail the possible causes of Meezan’s rise, and the effect is somewhat dry. For example, talking at length about technology, while going into detail about the software, where they were bought from and so on, comes across as mere record-keeping, which is important to be sure, but not very interesting.
Critical distance is not a strength of this book. Unabashedly partisan, the author tells the story of how Meezan Bank sees itself, not a fault in itself – it is Meezan’s own story, after all. There is, however, little critical input Naqvi provides other than relating platitudes about success to what was happening in the bank’s journey. He often interjects with commonplaces such as “if one dreams, then one should dream big” and “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. In a narrative driven by the interviews of the key players in Meezan’s success, where everything is neatly resolved into a story of success, the author could have punctuated with some surprising wisdom of his own. Instead, for an ‘unconventional’ book, the advice is surprisingly conventional.
In fact, the book also purports to be sort of a self-help manual, branded by Naqvi as an invitation to a journey. Each chapter starts with a “Finding True North” section which is a rumination on aligning beliefs and action. Each chapter ends with a “Living the Meezan” section which explores what the events in the previous chapter mean in life terms. Faux-inspirational, these offer inflated riffings on the themes of believing in yourself, sometimes things work out in different ways that you had imagined, being true to what you believe in, a leap of faith sometimes works out, the importance of humility, and so on. This roster of wisdom might certainly be effective advice in some cases, but here it is too repetitive and on the nose to be pleasing. The story of Meezan Bank is sufficiently interesting and speaks enough on its own without these nuggets thrown in.
The book could also have benefitted from more tables or graphs charting in numerical terms the growth of Meezan Bank on a yearly basis. As it stands, there is only one small table, which compares growth across 2014 and 2024. Growth figures otherwise are thrown into the sea of prose, and it’s hard to compare them unless you are making a table of your own on the side. Similarly, perhaps, a timeline of Meezan’s progress could also have been included. It would have helped the reader keep their bearings as the narrative meandered through various quotes, figures, personages, technical terms, and so on.
Overall, this paean to Meezan Bank is readable and generally holds interest. One factor in this is the topic, of course. You couldn’t go wrong with it. But Naqvi has done his research, and the extensive list of interviews he has done (an interviewee list is appended at the end of the book), adds colour and verve to his book. Some interesting reproductions in the book, such as Irfan’s handwritten note on a notepad listing the potential investors for AMIB and how much he could potentially get them to invest, are also a great peek into what was happening behind the scenes.
It is a welcome contribution to a literature that should certainly see more people chipping in. Many stories such as Meezan’s are waiting to be told.
