Legendary astounding gift of God
Kassim Parekh, who was born on January 31, 1931, worked in
Pakistan’s baking industry in a variety of capacities. Parekh began his banking
career at the age of 18 in 1949 at Habib Bank Limited, and when he left the
bank in 1988, he was a member of the board of directors. From September 1989 to
August 1990, he served as the 11th Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan. When
the Habib family started forming Metropolitan Bank in 1992, Parekh was invited
to join as Chairman and CEO. Parekh, who was known in the industry as ‘Kassim
bhai,’ dutifully started building up the bank. He resigned the job of CEO in
April 2008 and remained chairman until June 2016. The most remarkable and
unusual aspect of him was that despite being only a matriculate, he was a
natural banker, as he played a pivotal role in the advancement of HBL to become
Pakistan’s No. 1 private bank. Another remarkable characteristic of this
wonderful man is that no loan/advances/credit that he sanctioned became bad or
uncollectible. This legendary, astounding, and God-given gift belonged to the
Bantva Memon family. On January 31, 1931, he was born in Bantva Village, Gujarat,
India. He attended primary and secondary schools in the village and Rajkot,
Gujarat. After matriculation from Bombay he moved to Karachi, Pakistan, in
1947, where he first lived in a rented house on MA Jinnah Road.who died in February 2017 at the age
of 86.
His
grandfather, Dawood Parekh, was a founder member of Habib Bank Limited, and he
acquired the profession from him. He
was the embodiment of traditional banking, which he adored until the day he
died. Although his governorship of the State Bank of Pakistan was the pinnacle
of his career, Kassim Parekh, also known as “Kassim Bhai,”
established his life-long reputation as a highly distinguished commercial
banker in the country’s banking history.That he accepted, albeit reluctantly,
the post of SBP governor under the strong influence of then-prime minister
Benazir Bhutto is also a fact because he believed that Almighty God had not
bestowed upon him Milton Friedman’s monetarist orthodoxy or the dexterity of
his predecessor Imtiaz Alam Hanfi and successor Dr Mohammad Yaqub in regulating
member banks in a highly efficient and meaningful manner.
As a result, “Kassim Bhai” was adamant about
maintaining his reputation as a commercial banker who provides various
financial services such as accepting deposits and issuing loans in competitive
and frequently politically charged environments. Following in the footsteps of
Europe’s Rothschilds, he would advise banks to consider a prospective client’s
market reputation as the most valuable collateral rather than the size of his
physical assets when deciding whether to make a loan.
Kassim Bhai ostensibly worked as an agent for
Habib Bank before becoming an employee there in his early years. His deep
understanding of market dynamics led him to be a staunch opponent of targeted
lending, whether in agriculture or other fields dominated by political
expediency. Kassim Bhai hailed from a highly respectable family of the
mercantile Memon community who were already rubbing shoulders with the social
elites and exerting, if the veiled, influence on the government. He originated from
a highly respected family of the merchant Memon group, who were already rubbing
shoulders with the social elites, and he was not born into the wretchedness of
any pre-Partition ghetto.
The fact that his actions were guided by strong
ethics is also a well-known fact that helped him establish himself as a
“repository of trust” for his clients and country’s companies,
allowing him to play a critical role as an intermediary between lending
institutions and market participants. His death has left the country without a
major proponent of traditional banking, which owes its success to the depth of
personal lender-loanee relationships rather than the importance of statutory
norms and regulations.
I hope this article has helped you
learn a little bit about the Legendary-astounding gift of God – the Kassim Parekh
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