Meezan Bank holds its 38th Shariah Supervisory Board Meeting chaired by Justice (Retd.) Muhammad Taqi Usmani

The 38th meeting of Meezan Bank’s Shariah Supervisory Board (SSB) was recently held at Darul Uloom, Karachi under the Chairmanship of Justice (Retd.) Muhammad Taqi Usmani, along with other members of the Shariah Supervisory Board; Sheikh Esam Mohamed Ishaq and Dr. Muhammad Imran Ashraf Usmani.

Meezan Bank’s Founding President and CEO, Mr. Irfan Siddiqui, senior management of the Bank and Al-Meezan Investment Management Limited were also present at the meeting.

The meeting addressed the major issues and challenges of the Islamic banking industry with a keen focus on the critical challenges of liquidity management. With the lack of Shariah-compliant liquidity management instruments or equivalent Government securities and money market instruments, Islamic banking operations in the country face a liquidity bottleneck which places them at a competitive disadvantage with respect to their conventional counterparts.  The SSB carefully reviewed and discussed various solutions for addressing the excess liquidity situation of Islamic banks and provided guidelines regarding different proposals presented by the Management of Meezan Bank.

The SSB also approved a Bai Muajjal Sukuk transaction for the Bank to provide Shariah-compliant financing to the Government of Pakistan. In addition, the Board was pleased to note that with assets under management worth over Rs. 100 billion under 24 different funds/plans, Meezan Bank’s subsidiary - Al-Meezan Investment Management Limited (AMIM) has outpaced almost all players of the mutual funds industry in terms of growth in assets under management.

The SSB expressed satisfaction on AMIM’s progress and provided guidelines on various matters pertaining to the Asset Management industry.