KARACHI, Feb 25 (APP): The Governor State Bank of Pakistan, Jameel Ahmad, on Monday, reiterated the need to harness technology for significantly increasing financial deepening and developing climate-resilient financing in the country.
The governor, speaking at the Pakistan Banking Summit 2025, said that no country can achieve sustainable economic growth with low levels of private credit and called on the banks to rethink their current business model, reassess their priorities, and play a more active role in financial inter-mediation.
He highlighted the SBP’s Strategic Vision 2028 that focuses on promoting inclusive and sustainable access to financial services; building an innovative and inclusive digital financial ecosystem; and enhancing efficiency, effectiveness, fairness and stability of the financial system, and added that “the explicit addition of financial inclusion as one of SBP’s core functions in the amended SBP Act underscores its importance for the SBP.”
He also highlighted the significant strides in financial inclusion over the past decade and mentioned that bank account coverage has reached close to 64 percent of the adult population, from 47% in 2018, while the gender gap has also been narrowed from 47%to 34%.
Referring to the National Financial Inclusion Strategy 2024-2028, he informed that SBP has set a target to expand bank account coverage to 75 percent of the adult population and reduce the gender gap to 25 percent by 2028.
Ahmad stated that “to achieve these ambitious targets, we want to enhance the depth, breadth, and quality of financial services, particularly for low-income individuals, the microfinance sector, SMEs, and agriculture.”
The composition of banks’ lending portfolio in Pakistan is highly skewed towards established corporates at around 74%, and only 5% goes to SMEs, Governor SBP noted and called on the banking industry to reassess its business strategy to focus on mobilizing deposits and increasing credit to the private sector, particularly the SMEs and agriculture sectors.
Jameel Ahmad urged the industry to increase their usage of artificial intelligence, based on alternate data sources such as cellular, and satellite data to provide cost-effective alternative delivery channels to enhance the access, usage, and quality of financial services, particularly to SMEs, agriculture and our female population.
He also reiterated the urgent need of helping businesses to digitize their payments by providing digital transactional access, preferably via secure portals.
Governor SBP also urged financial institutions to “improve their ability to assess the impact of climate change across credit, market, liquidity, and operational risks.” Underlining the pivotal role of businesses and academia in tackling sustainability challenges, he stressed the need for research, policy recommendations, and fostering collaborations.
He expressed hope that the participants of the Pakistan Banking Summit would engage in thoughtful discussions and idea sharing that may serve as a cornerstone for the policies and initiatives that can drive the country toward a more sustainable and equitable future.