KARACHI: Faysal Bank Ltd said on Friday it has surrendered its conventional banking licence to the State Bank of Pakistan and received an Islamic banking licence instead. It’ll conduct its business as an Islamic bank from Jan 1, 2023, it said.

Five Islamic banks and 17 conventional banks with Islamic banking branches already operate in Pakistan. The share of Islamic banking assets in the overall banking industry is 18.6 per cent while the share of Shariah-compliant deposits stands at 19.4pc.

Faysal Bank will become the sixth full-fledged Sharia-compliant bank from the first day of next year. “There’s never been a conversion of a conventional bank to an Islamic bank at such a massive scale,” according to Syed M1ajid Ali, chief financial officer of the bank.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2022