KARACHI: The president National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) during his address to a gathering of more than 100 NBP regional management and Head office staff, from across Pakistan at a hotel in Karachi, emphasized on the importance of customer service to gain competitive edge. The theme of the address was “Happy Customers – Our Success”. He said that he will consider his job incomplete if even a single customer of NBP is unhappy and not satisfied with the institution’s service level. Superior customer service is the key to success, ultimately translating into higher business volumes and resulting growth in profitability. He said that the banking environment is dynamic and stressed upon the need to have appropriate controls in place to curtail misappropriation leading to reputational risk and resulting dent on the bank’s profitability. He said that NBP has zero tolerance for frauds and malpractice and reminded that personnel involved will be taken to task. During the conference, the proposal for re-organization and empowerment of the regional setup were also discussed. He said that the basic premise for strengthening of the regional setup is to provide better customer service, greater authority to the field offices,more accountability, and inclusion of branch / region personnel in decision making. He emphasized on providing conducive environment to the field functionaries to promote business growth. Concerns raised by regional management team during the discussion were satisfactorily addressed by Mr. Faisal Ahmed(Member – President Task Force), respective group heads and the President. Elaborating on the proposal he said that the long standing complaints in terms of increase turnaround time for credit proposals will be addressed through establishment of dedicated service centers for commercial and SME sector.He said that areas and processes that are not aligned with the system will be revisited and addressed on priority basis. The President emphasized that ‘digital banking’ is the future and we need to upgrade our I.T. platform on war footing to enable us in introducing new products. The need to focus on Islamic Banking business was also emphasized during the address, Mr. Khawaja Amin-ul-Azam (Head Islamic Banking Group) stressed upon the need for better co-ordination between the conventional and Islamic banking to promote business growth. He said that NBP has witnessed growth in Islamic banking branches during the last 03 years. However a lot needs to be done for improving the share of Islamic banking business in the overall business portfolio. President NBP reiterated that efforts need to be put in for sizable increase in the Islamic Banking portfolio thereby re-aligning it with the State Bank of Pakistan vision pertaining to Islamic Banking in Pakistan. Published in Daily Times, July 18th , 2017.