‘It’s a privilege and a burden at the same time’
Kamil’s ascent is all the more remarkable given the slow pace of progress for women
Sima Kamil is a reluctant role model in Pakistan. The 61-year-old chief executive officer walks into a 21st-floor meeting room at United Bank Ltd’s headquarters in Karachi and right away says she doesn’t want to be viewed as a “token” woman and would prefer to discuss the bank’s strategy. Yet she recognises that as the only woman heading a private sector lender in Pakistan — and one of the very few women leading companies in the country — she has a responsibility that goes beyond her job.
“It’s a privilege and a burden at the same time,” she says in an interview in a building overlooking the sandstone school her father attended, amid the urban sprawl of the nation’s largest city. “They roll you out. I’ve tried to avoid that and it’s not always easy; some people feel I should do it because it’s part of my duty, so there’s a balance to be struck.”
Kamil’s rise through the ranks of Pakistan’s intensely male-dominated banking industry in the conservative Islamic republic is nothing short of extraordinary. Her appointment last year was a further milestone in a country that became the first Muslim-majority nation to elect a female premier, yet where about onefifth of all women marry before they turn 18 and many still face routine domestic violence and repression.
Women from Pakistan’s elite have long held high political office. The most prominent was former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who hailed from a dynastic feudal family and was assassinated in 2007. From a less privileged background, Kamil’s path to the top came with considerable family support.
Kamil’s father grew up in Karachi when it was a sleepy port city before Pakistan’s violent partition with India in 1947. Her mother’s side of the family was uprooted during the tumultuous separation. They travelled from Eastern Punjab to Lahore by train.
Kamil’s mother studied philosophy at college and her father met his future wife at a poetry reading in Lahore. Her mother continued to enjoy and compose Urdu poetry and demanded the best schooling for her son and daughter. “She was the driving force”, Kamil says.
Kamil enrolled at Karachi Grammar School, one of the city’s most prestigious establishments. Kamil moved to London and acquired an MBA from City University. Though she won a place to study development economics at Oxford her family couldn’t afford it. Instead, she returned to Pakistan to work for American Express Co. in Karachi.
About three years later Kamil landed a job at ANZ Grindlays Bank first in Karachi and then Lahore. The move to the other city upset her parents as it’s rare even today for women in Pakistan to live alone. Nonetheless, Kamil was ambitious and rose through the ranks at ANZ Grindlays, spending two years in the mid-1990s in Melbourne. She moved again to Pakistan to become head of credit and then corporate regional executive before the lender’s takeover by Standard Chartered Plc in 2000. In 2001 it was at Habib Bank Ltd., the nation’s largest lender, that she found her mentor, Rafiuddin Zakir Mahmood, who was CEO until 2012. She was hired to run a regional corporate banking unit and was promoted to head the division in 2004.
Kamil’s education gave her a reputation as an upper-class, English-speaking Pakistani. So in bank branches Mahmood sought to see if Kamil could connect with the work force and had her converse with staff who spoke only Urdu and Punjabi. After Kamil passed those tests, Mahmood promoted her to head the lender’s branch network in 2011. In that role she managed thousands of employees, which was “unheard of for a woman,” Kamil says. “It shocked everybody in the bank because they thought I couldn’t do it.”
She brought about the highest annual average current account deposit growth in the industry, placing it first among Pakistan’s banks. With her eye on the top job, Kamil was appointed CEO last year at the lender’s main rival UBL — whose headquarters is a stone’s throw away. “It’s always an ambition for anyone who is in senior management at a bank,” she says.
They roll you out. I’ve tried to avoid that and it’s not always easy; some people feel I should do it because it’s part of my duty, so there’s a balance to be struck.” Sima Kamil| CEO, United Bank Ltd