United Bank : UBL partners with Sindh Board of Revenue and Pakistan Agriculture Research to increase agriculture finance in Sindh

Pilot Project MoU Signing Ceremony between UBL, Sindh Board of Revenue and Pakistan Agriculture Research to facilitate agriculture finance in Sindh. Seen in the picture are Ms. Sima Kamil, President & CEO UBL (front, second left), Mr. Syed Samar Hasnain, Executive Director Development Finance Group SBP (front right), Mr. Zia Ijaz, GE- Retail Bank UBL (front, center), Mr. Aziz Ahmed Barlas, Project Director PMU Board of Revenue, Government of Sindh (front, second right) and Mr. Chaudhry Qaiser Iqbal, Head Rural Bank UBL (front left). Also seen in the picture are Mr. Rehan Shoukat, CEO Pakistan Agriculture Research (PAR), Mr. Ghulam Muhammad Abbasi, Director Islamic Banking Department SBP, Mr. Basit Aly, Director Infrastructure, Housing & SME Department SBP and Mr. Kamran Akram Bakhshi, Additional Director, Agricultural Credit & Microfinance Department SBP and other executives of the three organizations.

UBL, Pakistan's Best Bank 2016, recently signed two separate MoUs to facilitate agricultural credit. The MoUs were signed with Sindh Board of Revenue (SBoR) and Pakistan Agriculture Research (PAR) under the auspices of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). This tripartite engagement is based on the mutually exclusive framework pertaining to demand and supply of agricultural credit for the farming community in the Matiari and Tando Allahyar districts of Sindh.

Ms. Sima Kamil, President & CEO UBL thanked the SBP management for providing a platform and facilitating the stakeholders. At the ceremony, she said "UBL will continue to capitalize on its core competence of being the most innovative bank. The Bank is ready to take lead in reaching out to the rural masses through technological advancements in collaboration with the Sindh Board of Revenue and Pakistan Agriculture Research. UBL will make all efforts to provide easy access to farm credit and enhance its agriculture portfolio." She reiterated her commitment to make UBL one of the leading banks in agricultural credit.

Mr. Syed Samar Hasnain, Executive Director Development Finance Group SBP explained the importance and usage of information technology and database technology in improving the outreach of Financial Institutions for catering to the agricultural credit needs of farmers in the underserved areas. He added that State Bank of Pakistan has been striving to enable the banking sector to benefit from the different technological advances and expertise through collaboration with various technology companies.

This initiative once again makes UBL the first and only major commercial bank in the private sector to access the land revenue record of Board of Revenue, Government of Sindh.

United Bank Limited (UBL) is one of Pakistan's largest banks in the private sector. The bank operates a network of over 45,000 customer touchpoints which include 1,385+ branches across Pakistan and 19 branches overseas. It was declared Pakistan's Best Bank 2016 at the first Pakistan Banking Awards and the bank's entity ratings were also recently upgraded to AAA/A-1+. The Bank maintains its leadership in branchless banking through UBL Omni which has an agent network of over 42,100 Dukaans.

The network also boasts 1120 ATMs and 480+ Contact Centre Agents across Pakistan. With a customer base of over 4 million, it leads the banking and financial services sector in Pakistan. Customers across the world have 24/7 access to the bank via UBL's world class Internet Banking.