Mr. Badiur Rahman, present Chairman of Al Arafah Islami Bank Limited (AIBL) and a renowned business personality of the country. Born in a remote village of Brahmanbaria district in 1953 he had to travel a lot since his early age being the offspring of a government employee. After his graduation from Chittagong University he attended Chartered Accountancy courses. Mr. Rahman a self made man started his career in a shipping company engaged in chartering and that beginning actually set the pathway for his career afterwards. In 1995 Mr. Rahman along with other respectable business personalities established Al-Arafah Islami Bank.
Limited (AIBL). Since then he served AIBL in multiple capacities and elected the Chairman of the Board of Directors in the year 2008. During his tenure as Chairman, he established & acquired all the subsidiaries of AIBL like AIBL Capital Market Services Limited, AIBL Capital Management Limited, and Millennium Information Solution Limited.
On a fine winter morning in December 2015, Mr. Rahman shared his thoughts with Fajr about Islami Banking and Islami Banking as a prospective career option for the youths. Mr. Rahman recollects his memories when they started the bank back in 1995 with the sole inspiration of spreading proper Islamic Banking (IB) in the country. As he believes the Islamic financial mechanism distributes wealth in a more equitable manner than its conventional counterparts. Islamic economy or for that matter IB ‘s are based on profit sharing whilst conventional banking operates on pre-fixed interest. In other words, IB is based on Shari’ah approved underlying transactions of goods and services while the conventional is not. Hence IB fosters the growth of the real economy while conventional foster the speculation. His thoughts and perspective on the present state and future prospects of IB in Bangladesh are very precise. In his own words “As 90% of the population are Muslim and they want to live a life that is endorsed by Al Quran and practiced by our Prophet (Sw) so IB’s are there”. He elaborated that if we could motivate our clients mostly businessmen to the fact that this banking is not only for the sake of business but for the satisfaction of Allah then the IB’s will do better. Mr. Rahman further added that practicing principles of Islamic Banking will benefit the country in developing a just economy in the long run.
Mr. Rahman while sharing his thoughts on IB emphasized that since the last decade, IB has experienced unparalleled growth in terms of industry size and value. It is a known fact that IB is a massive industry worth more than USD 17.13 billion in deposit, USD 14.56 billion in investment, and USD 0.16 Billion in net profit at the end of 2014. He further related that the human capital meant to support this industry is still in its nascent stages, with a huge number of employment coming largely from its conventional banking counterpart. He elaborated that like any other discipline, IB being a service industry is knowledge-based. He revealed that this knowledge is not confined to CGPA only. It includes intelligence, manners, positive attitude, ethical behavior and a practicing Muslim. Hence AIBL in its recruitment process adopted a 360-degree evaluation criterion. To put into his own words “Once a potential candidate qualifies the written test, in viva exam, we assess the criterion. After that, they go through vigorous training for 3 months and other job-related training. You see in the case of recruitment, we don’t judge by CGPA only”.
Mr. Rahman, an inspiration for the youth to build up a career with utmost belief in Allah and based on caliber, adaptive attitude, morality, hard work, and obviously piousness. In the end, he suggested that recently he is finding it a bit difficult as he has to travel to Bangladesh from Singapore two or three times a month. He really hopes that someone competent will come up, take his place and bring forward this movement that they long cherishing.
