Premier Bank Limited: A Leading Commercial Bank in Bangladesh

Overview

The Premier Bank PLC. is a private commercial bank in Bangladesh. It was incorporated on 10 June 1999 and formally launched its banking business on 26 October 1999, and it has been listed on the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges since 2007. The bank, whose motto is "Service First", is licensed and supervised by Bangladesh Bank, the country's central bank. For the first 26 years of its existence, Premier Bank was dominated by its founding chairman, Dr H. B. M. Iqbal — a former member of parliament and chairman of the Premier Group of Companies — and by members of his family. That era ended after the political change of August 2024: Bangladesh Bank dissolved the bank's board in August 2025 and installed a new one chaired by Dr Arifur Rahman, a founding vice-chairman of the bank, and since April 2026 its managing director has been Md Monzur Mofiz. The bank is now working through the consequences of its earlier governance failures: at the end of 2025, 31.01 percent of its loans were classified as non-performing and its capital adequacy ratio stood at just 5.70 percent, far below the regulatory minimum.

History

The Premier Bank was incorporated as a public limited company under the Companies Act 1994 on 10 June 1999, one of a wave of private banks licensed in the late 1990s, and it formally launched banking operations on 26 October 1999. Its founding chairman was Dr H. B. M. Iqbal, who also chaired the Premier Group of Companies, and its head office was established at Iqbal Centre on Kemal Ataturk Avenue in Banani, Dhaka — a building owned by the Iqbal family, from which the bank rented most of the floors.

The bank made its initial public offering and listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange and the Chittagong Stock Exchange in 2007. It received its offshore banking licence on 10 November 2009 and in 2010 set up its only subsidiary, Premier Bank Securities Limited. Over the following decade it added agent banking, Islamic banking through dedicated branches and windows, and app-based banking, launching its pMoney app in 2019. The institution is now styled The Premier Bank PLC.

The political upheaval of August 2024, when the Awami League government fell, changed the bank's course. In November 2024 the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) froze the bank accounts of Iqbal and his family. Iqbal resigned as chairman on 12 January 2025, ending a tenure of about 26 years; his son Mohammad Imran Iqbal briefly succeeded him, while another son, Moin Iqbal, also left the board. On 19 August 2025 Bangladesh Bank dissolved the board altogether and appointed a new one. In August 2026 the bank moved its head office out of Iqbal Centre to Shanta Pinnacle in Tejgaon, Dhaka, holding its first board meeting there on 6 August 2026.

Ownership and Leadership

Premier Bank is a publicly listed company with a paid-up capital of Tk 1,233.43 crore as of 31 December 2025. Its founding sponsors were led by Dr H. B. M. Iqbal and his Premier Group interests, and members of the Iqbal family held the chairmanship continuously from 1999 to 2025 — Iqbal himself for about 26 years, then briefly his son Mohammad Imran Iqbal.

The six-member board installed by Bangladesh Bank in August 2025 consists of one sponsor director and five independent directors. The chairman, Dr Arifur Rahman, is a founding vice-chairman and entrepreneur shareholder of the bank — a physician by training who built a business in manpower export — and was unanimously elected chairman at the board's 314th meeting on 21 August 2025. The independent directors are Md Forkan Hossain, a former Bangladesh Bank executive director; Syed Faridul Islam, a former additional managing director of United Commercial Bank; Md Sazzad Hossain, a former deputy managing director of Bank Asia; Professor Sheikh Morshed Jahan of the Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka; and M Nurul Alam, a chartered secretary.

At executive level, M Reazul Karim served as managing director and chief executive officer from 23 April 2018. He was succeeded on 24 April 2024 by Mohammad Abu Jafar, previously additional managing director and chief business officer of Dhaka Bank. Abu Jafar went on leave in November 2025, when deputy managing director Niamat Uddin Ahmed was made acting managing director, and the bank terminated Abu Jafar's employment in February 2026. Md Monzur Mofiz — whose career began at Sonali Bank in 1993 and who previously served as managing director of ONE Bank — joined as additional managing director with the managing director's current charge on 14 December 2025, and was confirmed as managing director for a three-year term, with Bangladesh Bank's approval, effective 16 April 2026.

Products and Services

Premier Bank offers conventional retail, corporate and small and medium enterprise (SME) banking: deposit accounts and schemes, personal, home and car loans, corporate and trade finance, treasury services and credit and debit cards. Lending to cottage, micro, small and medium enterprises accounted for more than 25 percent of the loan portfolio, according to the bank's then managing director in October 2024, and the branch network includes dedicated SME service centres. Trade services are handled through 20 authorised dealer branches, as listed in the bank's citizen charter of April 2026, and an offshore banking unit has operated since 2009, serving export-oriented and foreign-currency business.

The bank also provides Islamic banking through two dedicated Islamic branches and, as of December 2025, 25 Islamic banking windows. Remittance services target non-resident Bangladeshis, and agent banking outlets extend basic services — account opening, deposits, withdrawals and remittance delivery — to rural and semi-urban customers. Stockbrokerage and related capital-market services are provided by the bank's sole subsidiary, Premier Bank Securities Limited, which has operated since April 2011 and has branches in Dhaka and Chittagong.

Branch Network and Outreach

At its 27th annual general meeting on 30 June 2026, the bank reported a network of 136 branches, 67 sub-branches, 130 ATMs and 214 agent banking outlets. Its Basel III disclosure for 31 December 2025 gives a similar picture in more detail: the 136 branches include 12 SME service centres and agricultural branches and two Islamic branches, supported by 128 bank-owned ATM booths, 67 sub-branches, 214 agent outlets and 25 Islamic banking windows. (An older version of this profile claimed 900 ATMs; the bank's own disclosures put the true figure at roughly 130.)

The registered head office stood for most of the bank's life at Iqbal Centre in Banani, Dhaka. In August 2026 the head office relocated to Shanta Pinnacle (Level 32), 190 Bir Uttam Mir Shawkat Sarak, Tejgaon, Dhaka — a move the new board presented as part of the bank's transformation programme.

Financial Performance

Premier Bank's reported results collapsed as the true state of its loan book emerged after 2024. Consolidated net profit fell 68 percent, from Tk 415 crore in 2023 to Tk 134 crore in 2024, with earnings per share dropping from Tk 3.37 to Tk 1.09 and net asset value per share at Tk 21.73 at the end of 2024. The board declared no dividend for 2024 — the first time since the bank's 2007 listing — citing a provision shortfall against classified loans. By June 2025 deposits stood at Tk 35,700 crore and loans at Tk 33,921 crore, and the bank recorded a consolidated loss of Tk 136.56 crore for the first half of 2025.

For the full year 2025 the bank posted a consolidated net loss of Tk 992.59 crore, a loss per share of Tk 8.05, and again paid no dividend. Its Basel III disclosure for 31 December 2025 shows total loans of Tk 33,500.83 crore, of which Tk 10,389.40 crore — 31.01 percent — was classified, most of it in the bad-and-loss category. The capital adequacy ratio was 5.70 percent on a solo basis and 5.59 percent consolidated, against a requirement of 12.50 percent including the capital conservation buffer. The bank held provisions of Tk 2,501.42 crore against a requirement of Tk 12,300.68 crore, a gap covered only by a provisioning deferral of Tk 9,799.26 crore that Bangladesh Bank allowed in April 2026. Chairman Arifur Rahman has said that defaulted loans peaked at 65 percent of the portfolio before being brought down to around 30 percent, and that the bank mobilised Tk 5,300 crore in deposits over two years. Losses continued but narrowed in 2026: the consolidated loss for January–June 2026 was Tk 388.77 crore, and the loss per share for January–September 2026 improved to Tk 4.52 from Tk 5.49 a year earlier.

Digital Banking

The bank's main digital platform is pMoney, a smartphone app launched in April 2019 that supports transfers between a customer's own accounts and to other Premier Bank accounts, BEFTN transfers to other banks, credit-card bill payment, mobile top-up and utility bill payment, alongside conventional internet banking. The Premier Bank Quick Account service, launched in August 2024, allows a new account to be opened digitally without visiting a branch, and Premier Bank Green PIN, introduced in October 2024, lets cardholders set and manage card PINs digitally.

Digital channels also underpin the bank's remittance business: the bank's chairman noted in August 2026 that expatriate Bangladeshis can send money home through the pMoney app without visiting a branch. Agent banking outlets, of which the bank reported 214 in mid-2026, extend app- and card-based services to customers beyond the branch network, and the bank operates a call centre on 16411.

Challenges and Controversies

Premier Bank's crisis is rooted in governance. When Bangladesh Bank dissolved the board on 19 August 2025, the central bank cited "a lack of governance, weak policy implementation, and breaches in discipline". The incoming chairman has alleged that profits during the Iqbal era were inflated through window dressing, a claim consistent with the surge in classified loans recognised after 2024. A Bangladesh Bank special inspection found that the bank had paid Tk 10.31 crore in rent over more than 40 months from 2020 for the 20th and 21st floors of Iqbal Centre — space it never actually rented or used — according to a report in The Daily Star in May 2025.

The treatment of the former chairman's accounts brought regulatory penalties. The BFIU froze the accounts of HBM Iqbal and his family on 11 November 2024, yet in April 2025 it fined the bank Tk 1.47 crore for unfreezing Iqbal's account and allowing withdrawals from it. In November 2025 the BFIU fined the bank and several officials a total of Tk 3.44 crore over alleged money laundering and assistance to Iqbal and his family in moving foreign currency abroad through credit-card misuse; the bank was fined Tk 2.20 crore, and former managing director M Reazul Karim and additional managing director Syed Nowsher Ali were fined Tk 30 lakh each. Khaborer Kagoj, citing a BFIU investigation report, has reported that then managing director Mohammad Abu Jafar, Syed Nowsher Ali and the bank's chief anti-money-laundering compliance officer allegedly helped the family draw on the frozen accounts and that CCTV footage was allegedly destroyed; these specific allegations rest on that single investigative report. In January 2026 the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed five cases against 15 people, including Iqbal and former managing director M Reazul Karim, over alleged embezzlement of Tk 8.17 crore through fraudulent advertising work orders. Prothom Alo also reported in October 2025 that Iqbal had allegedly threatened the new chairman and the then managing director, prompting a general diary at Banani police station; the allegation was reported, not proven.

A separate scandal concerns the Narayanganj branch. A Bangladesh Bank investigation, reported by The Business Standard in May 2026, found that nearly Tk 10,500 crore was siphoned off between 2018 and 2023 through inflated export orders, with 29 clients opening back-to-back letters of credit at 100 to 375 percent above their limits and, according to the report, bank officials actively facilitating the process. The branch's manager had held the post for 10 years in violation of banking rules, and in March 2026 Bangladesh Bank revoked the branch's authorised dealer licence. In May 2026, 26 Narayanganj garment exporters alleged that bank officials had created fake contracts and fraudulent loans of Tk 3,081 crore in their companies' names. Managing director Md Monzur Mofiz responded that those involved, including the branch manager, had been dismissed, that the matter had been reported to the ACC, and that a forensic audit was under way.

The controversies also followed the bank's former chief executive. Premier Bank terminated Mohammad Abu Jafar's employment in February 2026 after obtaining Bangladesh Bank approval, and the ACC is investigating allegations against him involving embezzlement, corruption and money laundering, as The Business Standard reported in September 2026. Later in 2026, National Bank announced his appointment as its own managing director; a senior Bangladesh Bank official noted at the time that Abu Jafar had not been convicted and that the allegations remained unproven.

Corporate Social Responsibility

The bank's social spending is channelled mainly through the Premier Bank Foundation, a non-profit body funded from its operating profits, with stated priority areas in education, healthcare and disaster relief. In October 2024 the bank donated Tk 1 crore towards relief for flood victims in the north-east of the country. The foundation, together with the Premier Group Foundation, has supported a scholarship programme with the Royal University of Dhaka for underprivileged meritorious students, and the bank details its corporate social responsibility spending in its annual report.

Outlook and Conclusion

The new leadership presents the bank as a turnaround project: its 27th anniversary, celebrated on 26 October 2026 at the new Shanta Pinnacle head office, was held under the slogan "27 Years of Legacy, Rebuild on Trust", and the chairman's message in the 2025 annual report sets an ambition to build a "Three C Bank". A forensic audit commissioned on the advice of Bangladesh Bank and the BFIU is examining the head office and several branches, and a deposit and recovery drive in 2026 produced Tk 1,144 crore in fresh deposits in the 26 working days from 1 April 2026, alongside about Tk 523 crore in cash recovery between January and April 2026.

Whether the recovery succeeds will depend on restoring capital — the capital adequacy ratio of 5.70 percent at the end of 2025 was less than half the regulatory requirement — working through a provisioning gap that currently survives only on a central-bank deferral, and recovering or resolving a classified loan book that still stood at about 31 percent of all loans. Premier Bank thus remains, as of late 2026, one of Bangladesh's most stressed listed banks, but one whose new board and management have begun the slow work of recognition, clean-up and rebuilding depositor trust.