Dear Well-wishers,

Today is a special day for all of us because we are celebrating the 22nd Anniversary of Dhaka Bank on this day.

On July 5, 1995 Dhaka Bank started its commercial operation with a motto of providing “Excellence of Banking” to people at all walks of life. With the passage of time, the Bank completed 22 years of glorious journey and today the Bank steps into its 23rd year of operations. The journey wasn’t a smooth sailing all along. It wouldn’t have been be possible without the absolute support from our Clients, Regulators, Board of Directors and our talented Colleagues.

This year’s theme is "22 years of Solidarity". It symbolizes our strong bonding and continued commitment to keep on providing nothing less than the trendsetter BEST services to our valued Clients, Shareholders, Regulators and other Stakeholders.

It’s been a year of many initiatives across the board since we celebrated the 21st Anniversary last year. We have formed Cash Management Unit for providing professional Cash Flow Management services to the business houses of the country. Though we are late in the competition, I believe with our all out effort we won’t fall behind. We are on the verge of launching Agent Banking Services, now waiting for the final nod from Bangladesh Bank (BB). We have introduced some exciting retail liability products like ValueMax, Personal Current Account and Fixed Deposit Plus in a bid to shape our deposit mix better. The result is evident. CASA deposit contribution to total pie rose by almost 5% in H1’17. We are getting closer to the full year target of No and Low cost deposit. You must have seen that this year during Ramadan we got 120 plus Partners wherefrom our Card Holders availed discounted offers.

Surely you have also seen a number of wonderful Service Excellence initiatives to have been taken round the year. A few of them are: launching of 16474 - 24/7 Contact Centre, আন্তরিক for catering exclusive services to Senior Citizens, physically challenged people and expectant mothers, Online Cash Management Portal branded as Dhaka Bank C Solutions, Dhaka Bank GO for on-the-go Banking.Trade Cloud, an online Foreign Trade module for our Trade Customers; and LiveChat, real time chat-box on our Corporate Website are just a few of many innovations that are on the way.

We want to maintain the same level of service standard across the Bank. With this objective in mind an Automated Complaint Management System has been introduced at various service desks currently at a Branch, which will be expanded to some high-footfalls Branches.

On the 20th Anniversary of the Bank, the then Governor of BB formally inaugurated “Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) Office” and “Reconciler Office”. To uphold the spirit of PSR, we arranged at the end of 2016 the first-ever PSR Campaign “আসুন শীতার্তদের পাশে দাঁড়াই” and donated clothes worth BDT 2.5 million to some 15,000 people pan country. The clothes were collected from our Employees, Customers and digital Connects. A strong proof of “Together We Can”!

Incidentally the Bank’s Anniversary and half-year closing fall close by. We have just crossed the half way mark of 2017. It’s good time to review our financial performance a bit. Majority financial indicators are showing better sign than H1’16 and last year-end. It is an indication that we are sailing towards positive trajectory. InshaAllah, we can post a better result by the end of 2017 with support from all of you.

You will be happy to know that we are gradually diversifying our loan book with an objective to de-risking the portfolio concentration. Now SME financing constitutes a significant portion of our loan book, grew by more than 6% in one and half years; while Retail’s share is slowly increasing. As a domino effect, our dependency on Corporate is gradually declining. Hence the lion share of our profit will come not only from Corporate, but also from other businesses, in a way to balance and sustain the profit mix.

Today I think much more about Dhaka Bank’s future (as a Bank of Future!), rather than its past. Competition will get intense in the coming years than it ever has before. We already live in an Omni-Channel Banking reality, and Banking will become even more pervasive. We are nearing the point where the Banks will face vicious in and out competition, strict regulations, rapid technical changes which will ultimately empower our Customers even more.

Together we have acheived a lot over the years; and helped countless people and businesses to realize their full potential. But what matters most now, is what we do next.

We always have the spirit "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are" as said by Theodore Roosevelt. We believe, working with this spirit after a 22-year journey of our Bank, we can confidently say "Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right” echoing Oprah Winfrey. At the end I would like to thank you once again for your help in making Dhaka Bank a fantastic Bank -- to work with now, and over the decades to come.

Together inside, and together with all beyond the fence – we will keep on growing and winning.

Best regards.

Syed Mahbubur Rahman

Managing Director & CEO