Ghulam Muhammad Abbasi

Mr. Ghulam Muhammad Abbasi is currently holding the positions of Executive Director Islamic Finance and Financial Inclusion Groups at State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). He has around 30 years of diversified experience at senior management levels in various regulatory arms of the central bank, which includes on-site inspections, offsite surveillance, banking supervision, Banking Policy & Regulation, infrastructure finance, housing finance, SME finance, green finance and Islamic banking.

Leading the Islamic finance at SBP, he has played a pivotal role for development and promotion of Islamic banking in the country since 2015. He has led various regulatory and policy interventions to put in place an enabling and conducive policy environment for Islamic banking. The leading initiatives interalia include strengthening Shariah governance framework, augmenting regulatory environment, providing a conducive liquidity management regime, and instituting reforms for capacity building and awareness promotion. Currently, he is playing a leading role in transformation of conventional banking into Islamic after the judgement of Federal Shariat Court on RIBA.

Mr. Abbasi has delivered key note addresses in several international conferences, seminars and training programs on Islamic banking, banking supervision, SME Financing and Housing Finance. He has also represented SBP in various high-powered international forums on Islamic banking. He has been an important part of Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB)’s Technical Committee mandated to develop prudential standards for global Islamic finance industry. He remained the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of various working groups/taskforces constituted for the development of IFSB Standards and other related important initiatives.

Under his able leadership, SBP has won the most coveted international Award as the Best Central Bank for Promoting Islamic banking for the years 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2026. The award has been bestowed based on the results of poll conducted by Islamic Finance News (IFN), an arm of REDmoney Group, Malaysia.