FIRST WOMEN BANK LIMITED

About Us FIRST WOMEN BANK LTD. First Women Bank Ltd. is a unique financial institution and commercial bank of its kind in the world. It is the only Bank in Pakistan that has a mandate to cater to financial and business needs of women and provide them with easy access to credit for enterprise development. The FWBL Vision and Mission statements reaffirm this commitment. Initially the FWBL model was only catered to women at all levels of economic activity – micro, small, medium and corporate. Over the years with promotion or specialization of Micro Finance banks which are set up to cater to financial needs of low income communities, FWBL has shifted its focus to range of financial services (SME) other than MF. Now the Credit worthy business concerns, irrespective of gender, can avail loan on competitive basis. The bank remains true to its roots as the women centered organization and facilitate the financial inclusion of the customers who have availed the financing facilities and are maintaining their savings and the other business accounts. SPONSORS The Government of Pakistan owns majority shareholding (82.64%) in the Bank while its remaining shares are held by the five big commercial banks – NBP, HBL, MCB, UBL and ABL. CAPITAL BASE Minimum Capital required to set up and run commercial banks in Pakistan is PKR 10 Billion whereas SBP has given special relaxation to FWBL to meet MCR net of losses of PKR 3 Billion instead of PKR 10 Billion. The Bank successfully managed to close the year 2015 in compliance to the revised MCR of PKR 3 Billion with overwhelming support of Ministry of Finance (MoF) Government of Pakistan. CREDIT RATING The Bank has short-term entity rating of A2 and long-term entity rating of A-. HISTORY In 1989 the establishment of FWBL was an innovative and bold step conceived by the then Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (Shaheed) who envisioned a bank that would undertake the conduct of all forms of business of Banking Company in a manner designed to meet the special needs of women and to encourage and assist them in promotion and running of trade and industry and practice of profession. The bank came into being as an affirmative action of the Parliament to indicate the Government’s commitment to provide access to half of its population to the formal financial services. The Bank was incorporated as a Scheduled Commercial Bank under the Companies Ordinance 1984 as a joint venture of five largest Commercial Banks and Government of Pakistan. The core purpose of the bank was to mobilise funds, providing saving solutions to the savers and channel those funds to the potential borrowers. Bank availed this opportunity fully and initiated many non-traditional banking and women centric products / projects which met with great success. Bank was pioneer in introducing: MicroFinance to women under Group Guarantee scheme (which was later adopted by micro finance institutions came into being) and initiated micro and small lending programs in suburbs and rural areas close to FWBL Branch network. Bank imparted Computer Literacy Training to large number of women through its Computer Literacy Centres located in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The bank also introduced many non-traditional products to build capacity of women to undertake income generating projects. Bank also took a number of unprecedented initiatives, such as