MTB: the symbol of trust in management

Mutual Trust Bank can boast about one thing that its peers cannot: its board consists of the country's most successful conglomerates.

But the influential and successful board members do not interfere in the managerial affairs -- and that is the reason behind the bank's meteoric rise.

The chief executive of the bank has several times higher credit approval authority than in any other banks in Bangladesh.

“The board has empowered the management with the maximum possible power to run the bank effectively but with proper accountability and reporting,” said Anis A Khan, managing director and CEO of the bank.

The strategy worked well. The bank paid 20 percent dividends for its shareholders for 2014 -- higher than the industry average of 10-15 percent. Its operating profits rose nearly 24 percent year-on-year to more than Tk 572 crore in 2014.

Net profits recorded a whopping 68 percent growth and earnings per share almost doubled to Tk 3.12. Its capital adequacy ratio stood at 10.77 percent, higher than the Bangladesh Bank's mandated 10 percent.

What is more impressive is its nonperforming loans (NPL), which came down by around 1 percentage point to just 2.67 percent last year. The overall banking sector's NPL was over 10 percent.