Ferwa proves ‘perceptions against women’ wrong

Islamabad

There are certain sectors considered to be purely a male domain in Pakistani society. Banking is one such sector as it is an accepted social norm that women are bad in financial matters.

Defying all these perceptions, National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) Branch Manager for Jinnah Avenue Syeda Umme Ferwa not only believes the opposite but she has also proved that women can do equally good or even better than men when it comes to numbers.

Her stance was accepted by all when Ferwa received ‘Manager of the Year Award’ in ‘Average Deposit Growth for NBP’ for the year 2015. Among around 1400 total NBP branches in the country, Ferwa’s branch was able to give maximum increase in deposit growth in year 2015.

“It is a wrong impression that women are bad at numbers. If you look at women based at homes, you can see how intelligently they manage the household budget. They always remember the day and time of spending the money whereas men spend carelessly,” she said substantiating her point of view with a day to day example.

Ferwa is currently leading fourth NBP branch as a manager. In her 10-year banking career on this post, her branches were always declared to be in ‘A’ category. Deposits of her first branch increased from Rs300 million to Rs1.5 billion, for second branch, the increase was from Rs800 million to Rs4.0 billion. At third branch, increase was from Rs4 billion to Rs30 billion.

“I was part of the first batch of women managers trained in 2005. In start, it was not very easy for majority of NBP employees to adjust to the fact that women will be the managers and they will have to work under them. They predicted that these women are going to take these branches down. I am glad to say today that all members of that batch proved it wrong,” Ferwa recalled.

For Ferwa, every new account motivates her to work more. “Whenever I get time sometime out of my daily routine, I search the Google map to know more about the kind of businesses around the branch area. Then I visit those offices and shops to motivate people for opening an account in NBP,” she said.

Talking about the response from general public, she said that it is always amazing. “People are so patriotic and they want to benefit the country. They only thing we need to do is to build their trust,” she said.

Ferwa has many awards at her credit including NBP awards .She was nominated for Fatima Jinnah Award in 2006 and Youth Award in 2009 and was declared Women Banker of the Year in 2011 by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

She says that there are no short cuts to progress. The only key is hard work. Answering to a question about the tough routine of bankers, she admitted that long work hours are the only challenge in this sector for a woman. “I think that late hours are no more a challenge when family members especially husband decide to cooperate and understand. I am lucky to have such family and I will urge all families especially male members of the family to believe in the dreams of their daughters, wives and sisters. We can achieve true women empowerment only when men join women in their struggle and admit that we are more than 50% of population,” she said.

Besides that, she believes that office environment contributes a lot in the progress of a person. “I am lucky that NBP provides discrimination free environment where only talent, capability and hard work matters,” she said while thanking President NBP Syed Ahmed Iqbal Ashraf, Group Chief NBP Mudasser H Khan and Regional Head Farooq Hassan for their encouragement and support.