First Women Bank Ltd., a scheduled commercial bank and DFI designed, managed and run by women, for women, was set up in 1989 by the Islamic world's first woman Prime Minister Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (Shaheed) who envisioned a bank that would meet the special needs of women. Currently, the Bank is headed by Mrs. Shafqat Sultana, who took over as President in May 2009.
The FWBL model caters to women at all levels of economic activity - micro, small, medium and corporate. Most importantly, the Bank provides women with the support services required to navigate the obstacles to the development of business. By doing so, FWBL is helping them emerge as key players in the national and global economy.
The Bank has always looked at its micro-finance borrowers as potential SME and Corporate clients. The Bank's unique credit policies promote asset ownership for women, by:
Financing to business entity:
-- Where women have 50% shareholding or
-- Where a woman is the Managing Director or
-- Where women employees are 50% or more
However, the Bank seeks deposits from and provides services to both genders. It is the only bank in Pakistan offering women single and joint accounts without any minimum balance requirements and penalties on low balances. The Bank offers Online Banking Facility to its customers at branches all over Pakistan. The ATM Card customers can access their Savings and Current account through all ATM's in Pakistan. The bank is also live on SWIFT to transfer funds internationally. At present, the Bank has a network of 38 branches (23 cities) and have presence in rural areas of the country through its strategic partners.
FWBL was the first Commercial Bank to launch Micro Credit in Pakistan. In 1992, an ILO Geneva Study recognized First Women Bank Ltd. as a major innovation in Pakistan, along with Edhi Trust and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). In 1994, Euro money awarded FWBL the Best Bank in Pakistan for its low administrative cost.
In 2001, Women's World Banking in its Global Directory profiled FWBL for Banking Innovation in Microfinance, and acknowledged that FWBL features among the world's micro finance leaders.
To combat child labor in the carpet weaving industry, FWBL collaborated with ILO and directly financed women micro-borrowers in rural areas. Asian Banking Award 2005 awarded FWBL / ILO - IPEC Micro Credit Program as Runners-Up in its Micro-Finance Program category. Under this project, one of the borrowers received the Global Micro Entrepreneurship Award (Runners-up) organized by the UN Capital Development Fund in collaboration with CITI Group Foundation, Harvard Business School and Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund.
The ministry of women development collaborated with First Women Bank Ltd., for economic empowerment of rural women. The major objective of the project was to enable the poorest of the poor women in rural areas to supplement their livelihood by supporting micro enterprise development, through strong linkage between micro-credit and skill development, thus leading to their economic empowerment. Under this project one of the borrowers won two Citi PPAF Micro-Entrepreneurship Awards.
Realizing the fact that only access to credit is not the solution to economically empower women, First Women Bank Ltd. developed Computer Literacy and Business Centers, which have played a very important role in developing computer and business skills in women who were not very well educated, lacked technical skills and belonged to lower middle income group.
Recently First Women Bank Ltd. has become the strategic partner of United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) for the implementation of Women Entrepreneurship Development Program (WED).
The bank has so far disbursed Rs. 28 billion with outreach to 47, 453 borrowers, of which Rs. 16.1 billion has been disbursed to women, which constitute 57% financing to women
In Pakistan, when compared with other countries of the world, female entrepreneurship is amongst the lowest in the world. With very low female participation in the economy of the country, the percentage of female employers is even less than one percent. The issues stems from the statistical invisibility of women. There's very little research on the market itself, primarily because women are just not considered a market worth tapping into on their own.
Even at the macro level, there are very few people working to empower women as a special interest group. This is mainly because no extensive research or study has been done so far on women's economic role. Realizing the importance of research, FWBL commissioned SPDC to conduct a Market Assessment Study for First Women Bank. The study gave surprising results and revealed that Credit demand of women in five big cities of the country ranged between Rs. 261 Billion to Rs. 285 Billion.
Since inception, FWBL has contributed substantially in raising a sizeable body of women entrepreneurs and banking professionals in the country. For example, the total proportion of women bankers in the commercial banks is around 6% of the total bankers, which was less than 1% around twenty one years ago.
FWBL's successful model has been replicated in Tanzania and Iran.
FWBL was formed with shareholdings from all the large public sectors banks. Over time, these banks were privatized; however, their shares in FWBL were not transferred to the public sector. A majority of the shares of FWBL are currently with the private sector banks - HBL, MCB, ABL and UBL. Only National Bank of Pakistan and the Ministry of Women Development are the public sector shareholder of the Bank.
Recently, the Government of Pakistan has decided to keep First Women Bank Ltd. (FWBL) in the public sector by purchasing the shares of private shareholder banks i.e. MCB, HBL, ABL and UBL through State Bank of Pakistan.
Today, FWBL's mission for empowering women, remains unmatched.
"To transform the status of women from passive beneficiaries of social services to dynamic agents of change."
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