Mohammad Sohail Hussain
Contribution Editor
Name: Mohammad Sohail Hussain
Company: Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank
Cell: # 00971-56-7399776
E-mail: sohailh786@yahoo.com
Address: House # B-193, Block – 13 Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi
Work Experience:
December 2010 to date
At present, I am working with Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Abu Dhabi as their Head of Trade Finance Department with
a team of 17 staff with 3 to manage this complex unit covering following responsibilities but not limited to:
- Staffing, System Improvement, Trade Operations set up, Operating Standards, Service Level Agreements, Polices & Procedures.
- Trade / Structured Trade Finance (Imports, exports, commercial finance import Murabaha.
- Managing Corporate Customers by ensuring exceptional quality delivery while managing their day to day transactions and to manage other operational issues.
- Ensuring implementation of institutional policies and procedures.
- Encourage and enhance control culture across the unit to ensure that the gaps, if any, bridge to avoid issues for the bank.
- To outline staff job profiles with proper back-ups to ensure business as usual without cny compromise over customer delivery.
- Staff training (on job) to enhance their potential to understand the technical know how critically important to manage this complex proposition.
- Assist business RMs wherever they need operational support in managing customer complex trade transactions and provide solution to this effect to enable our customers to conclude their transactions / deals appropriately.
- Actively participate with business (GTS) trade team to explore product offering and other essential ingredients, which are critical to enlarge our trade product suite and delivery to compete in the market.
April 2008 December 2010
Barclays Bank Plc, Pakistan – Head of Commercial Operations as Vice President
Working with Barclays Bank Pakistan as Head of Commercial Operations and managing their Commercial
Operations portfolio including Trade, FI & Treasury Operations with a team of 27 staff with 6 direct reports.
Scope of core responsibilities:
- Staffing, System Implementation, Trade Operations set up, Operating Standards, Service Level Agreements, Polices & Procedures. While launching Barclays in Pakistan in 2008, all these activities were done within a very short span considering tight time lines for the business launch perspective.
- Trade / Structured Trade Finance (Imports, exports, commercial loans, finance against TR, pre & post export financing, including Central Bank’s driven export refinancing & long term import financing for plant & machinery;
- Project Financing , Capital Imports (CAPEX), Equity Injection, Three Way Merchanting Trade etc;
- Cash Management and Commercial Remittances such as remittances for Freight & Passage, Royalty, Technical Services, Devidend etc;
- Managing one window Corporate Customer Service Unit, it is an independent unit liaison in between corporate customers and operations to ensure quality delivery through a team of dedicated Service Managers to manage all day-to-day operational issues of our customers. This unit also leads root cause analaysis for re-occurring issues, process re-engineering, taking inbound & outbound customers calls to respond quick kills / investigations, technical consultancy to the large corporate names for their structured transactions viz a viz trade.
- As a liaison officer , interact with Central Bank on behalf of the bank to manage routine affairs of the bank as well as commercial customers to obtain required approvals for complex commercial transactions.
October 2005 April 2008
Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan Limited (DIB)
Vice President – Trade Operations Head
Being a founder member, launched DIB in Pakistan. Took part in building the required infrastructure for rolling out centralized trade operations for this esteemed Islamic institution, which includes but not limited to Staffing, System Implementation, Trade Operations set up. Tailored Trade Ops Manual, Service Level Agreements, Polices and Procedures. All these activities were done within a very short span considering tight time lines for the business launch to start with.
Engaged closely myself with their Shari’a department and other stake holders to outline following Islamic structures or products for Trade Financing:
- Wakala Istithmar, an Islamic structure for export oriented customers, as an alternate of conventional way of trade financing i.e., Export Bills Negotiation / Discounting. This was a flag ship product for the customers, which was also used to capture local or inland trade segments;
- Wakala Murabaha for import based customers to extend financial support against imports on usance terms;
- Proposed an alternate solution for conventional Export Finance Scheme (EFS) of State Bank of Pakistan on Islamic Principles; and
- Float proposals for Long Term Financing (LTF) for CAPEX duly structured under Islamic mode of financing i.e., Murabaha. The given ideas on EFS and LTF were raised with the absolute help and guidance from Sharia Board for implementation.
September 2004 – September 2005
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Resident Vice President – Sr. Branch Ops Head for Islamabad Corporate Bank, Branch
In September – 2004, I had been posted to Islamabad as Sr. Branch Operations Officer to look after Corporate Bank operations.
Basically, this move was taken place to support the business and to manage sensitive corporate portfolio, which was based on Public Sector, GOP, Consulates, Embassies, Multinational Companies maintaining global relationships and to support the booming telecom sector mainly based in Islamabad. While my stay in Islamabad, I had extended my technical support to the customers especially M/s. Telenor, Mobilink, Pak Tel, Nokia, Nortel, AlanDick, Ernest & Young, US Embassy, Saudi Embassy, BAT etc., which in turns allowed them to seek some un-precedent and critical approvals from Central Bank of Pakistan to roll out their business and structured corporate bank transactions in Pakistan.
October 2001 – September 2004
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Resident Vice President – CitiService Unit
CitiService is an independent unit to provide quality customer services to the blue chip corporate names like Hubco, National Power, British Petroleum, Asia Petroleum, PSO, National Refinery, Pakistan Refinery, Mari Gas, Shell Pakistan, ENI, Lakson Tobacco, Reckitt Benckiser, Telenor, Mobilink, Sapphire Textile, Gadoon Textile, Dewan Group, ICI, Procter & Gamble, Aventis, Merck Marker, Dupont, US Embassy, Saudi Embassy, Pakistan International Airlines, Saudi Airlines etc.
I was managing CitiService, as unit head of 9 direct and 4 indirect reports. In this unit, several designated Service Managers extend their support to their assigned portfolios based on Local Cooperative Group (LCG), Global Relationship Banking (GRB), Global Transport Services (GTS) & Public Sector (PS) to liaise with operations, products and marketing teams to cater day-to-day operational issues between bank and the customers. The major chunk of customer issues were related to Trade, Cash Management, Project Financing, Capital Imports, Equity Injection, Foreign Currency Loans engaged by the customers from their parent offices abroad or from international lenders, different types of commercial remittances e.g., Royalty, Technical Fees, Registration of foreign currency loan agreements, Dividend Payments to the foreign share holders of the customers and other day to day routine matters.
October 1998 – October 2001
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Manager – CitiService
With in this period, I performed being a Sr. Customer Service Representative (Service Manager), in order to cater operational needs of assigned corporate names to me. It was a flavour of mixed portfolio of MNCs, Local Cooperate and Public Sector.
April 1996 – October 1998
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Assistant Manager – Trade Services Unit
During this tenure, I was deputed as department head for exports, where my responsibility was to extend quality and timely execution of export related transactions such as Negotiation, Discounting of Export Bills under Documentary Credits, Outward Export Bills Collection called under Documentary Collection, Tracking of Export Proceeds against outstanding export bills, Advising of Letters of Credit etc. I was also responsible to mange corporate loans e.g., demand, term, export pre or post shipment loans etc.
April 1994 – April 1996
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Authorized Signer – Trade Services Unit
While this period, I was deputed in Imports section to look after issuance of Documentary Letters of Credit, Lodgement / Retirement of Import Bills and handling of Inward Documentary Collection in line with the guidelines given in UCP-600 (formally UCP 500) and URC-522 respectively.
July 1993 – April 1994
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Sr. Admin. Assistant – Trade Services Unit
Worked as a senior processor in Trade Services Unit in Imports Section.
July 1992 – July 1993 – Trade Services Unit
Citibank, N.A., Pakistan
Joined Citibank as a clerk in Trade Services Unit in Import Section. Here, I must confess, that this was the turning point of my career.
February 1982 – Jul 1992
Forbes Forbes Campbell & Co. (Pvt) Ltd.
Supervisor – Imports & Exports Documentation Dept.
My career commenced from this organization, where I got exposure to office environment and was able to performed various tasks such as compilation of statistical statements for cargo uplifted from Pakistan, preparation of Import General Manifest (IGM) for incoming cargo to Pakistan, Arrival Notices to the consignees in order to keep them informed for their incoming merchandise, Issuance of Export Bills of Lading and preparation of Export General Manifest for exported goods from Pakistan. At that point in time, the above named company was the agent of some recognized shipping lines such as APL, SeaLand, UASC, Nedlloyed and I have the honour to worked for all these well known shipping lines.
Education & Specialization
- Bachelor of Commerce from Karachi University.
- Awarded full scholarship by “electronic Business School of Ireland (eBSI)” to accomplish their accreditation for “International Trade Specialist (ITS)” graduation program, it was a two year accreditation, which I successfully qualified in 2006. This scholarship was awarded to me by Mr. Vincent O’Brien a wonderful man and a learned personality being an international consultant. I also honoured to work with Mr. O’Brien over one of the UNCTAD project in Pakistan. And I must confess that I have learned a lot while working with Mr. O’Brien.
- Again in 2007, based on my ITS graduation with eBSI, I have been nominated to accomplish one year certification course with the Institute of Export of United Kingdom (UK) where eBSI’s graduates will be awarded by the Institute of Export ‘Finance, UK of International Trade certification in 2007. This means that successful ITS Graduates will immediately be eligible to become Associate Members of the Institute of Export, be awarded the Advance Certificate in International Trade and may then proceed to study the remaining 3 modules of the Diploma in International Trade in order to achieve full membership of the Institute of Export and to use the designation MIEX (Grad).
- Invited by the training department i.e., National Institute of Banking & Finance (NIBAF) of the State Bank of Pakistan to conduct training session for their operations staff on International Trade & Regulatory Regime in Pakistan in 2009 - 2010;
- Service Excellence Award by Citibank, Gold Award by Citibank, Quality Surprise Award by Citibank, Second time awarded Service Excellence Award by Citibank.
- In 1997, deputized on a special assignment to Citibank - Athens, Greece being a member of their task force to assist Citibank, Athens/Greece branch in their Share Multiplier/Custodial Services.
- Based on my technical competence, in 2001 invited by The National Trade & Transportation Facilitation Committee (a standing committee by the Ministry of Commerce, Government of Pakistan) to participate being a member of this committee to work with Banking Working Group for implementation of a project in Pakistan under Trade and Transport Facilitation program with technical assistance of United Nation Conference on Trade Development (UNCTAD) in order to simplify the trade and transport procedures and harmonize these with international practices in consultation with the government and public / private sector stakeholders.
- In April-2004, awarded full scholarship by “electronic Business School of Ireland” to accomplish the course on “International Trade Specialist” graduation program, which I qualified in 2006. Here I must confess that this scholarship was awarded to me by Mr. Vincent O’Brien renowned international consultant and he was the one who gave me this opportunity keeping in view my passion while working with him on an UNCTAD project in Pakistan.
- In 2007, based on my ITS graduation with eBSI, I have been nominated to accomplish one year certification course with the Institute of Export of United Kingdom (UK) to become Associate Members of the Institute of Export, to be awarded the Advance Certificate in International Trade to proceed further to study the remaining 3 modules of the Diploma in International Trade in order to achieve full membership of the Institute of Export and to use the designation MIEX (Grad).
- In May-2004, sent to Citibank, Turkey as a guest reviewer to conduct their Trade Service Unit audit on behalf of regional audit team based in London/UK.
- Again in September – 2006, I have been invited by the NTTFC on the project for automation of trade related activities / documentation across Pakistan.
- Actively engaged myself with our Central Bank for upgrading / liberalizing the existing foreign exchange rules / regulations / policies, directly impacting to the entire industry not only from Pakistan’s perspective but from international stand point as well.
- Putting efforts in suggesting improvements to International Chamber of Commerce and its National Committee in Pakistan for various trade related matters e.g., suggested various aspects in the revision of UCP-500.
- In 2007, become a member of National Committee (Pakistan) of International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for their Banking Commission in Pakistan.
Course Attended
- Commercial Banking from Institute of Bankers in Pakistan;
- Service Excellence an in house training within Citibank;
- Credit Operations an in house training within Citibank;
- Quality Services, Basic Treasury Skills/ Bourse Game from regional training centre of Citibank in Istanbul, Turkey;
- Fraud Awareness conducted by Citibank, Karachi; and
- Couple of trainings on Islamic Banking arranged by Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan.
- Management Development Centre – September 2007, arranged by Dubai Islamic Bank Pakistan in Sri Lanka.
Marital Status: Married and enjoing two lovely kids.
Date of Birth: 10th May, 1964
References: To be provided upon request.
