Good governance, innovation, and financial inclusion have marked the 25-year journey of Bank Asia, its Managing Director Sohail RK Hussain has said.
"Good governance has played the most important role in Bank Asia's operations since its beginning. As a result, it does not belong to the group of problem-ridden banks at present," he said.
Hussain made the remarks at a press conference held in a city hotel to celebrate the private commercial bank's silver jubilee on Tuesday.
He also said Bank Asia's interaction with regulators and other stakeholders revealed its strong stance on ensuring good governance.
Sharing the bank's innovation journey with the audience, he said Bank Asia had launched Bangladesh's first agent banking service in 2014 with the objective of ensuring financial inclusion in line with the right to banking services nationwide.
"At present, the agent banking outlets across the country make transactions of more than Tk 2.5 billion per day," Hussain said, adding the bank eyed quadrupling the figure in the next couple of years.
He said the bank had around 40,000 agent banking outlets at present. Highlighting the bank's services to its clients, the managing director said Bank Asia had continuously opened new doors and unfolded new opportunities in the banking sector for the past 25 years.
From streamlining loans and social safety net disbursements to introducing income sharing ratio (ISR) in Islamic banking as well as pioneering payment gateway, agent banking, and micro-merchant services, the bank had embraced the post-Covid innovation to meet customers' needs and set new benchmarks, he said.
The bank's additional managing directors Shafiuzzaman and ANM Mahfuz; deputy managing directors Mohammad Ziaul Hasan Molla, SM Iqbal Hossain, Alamgir Hossain, SM Anisuzzaman, Arequl Arefeen, and Mirza Azhar Ahmed; and other top officials were also present on the occasion.
Founded on November 27, 1999, Bank Asia has earned a strong reputation for operational excellence and customer-centric services.
Starting with corporate banking, it now operates 135 branches, 15 sub-branches, five Islamic windows, and more than 5,000 agent outlets.
It supports over 50,000 micro-merchants nationwide. Additionally, its subsidiary Bank Asia Securities runs 12 branches, with exchange houses in London and the US.
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