Interview with Mr. Imtiaz Ansari, Finance Adviser
PAGE: Tell me something about yourself, please:
Imtiaz Ansari: I am a senior financial leader with over 26 years of robust expertise spanning global corporate banking, financial management, auditing, and complex disbursement operations within highly regulated international environments. I hold a Master’s degree in Business Administration with a specialization in Finance, and I currently lead the Finance Team at a foreign Diplomatic Mission in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. My professional foundation includes 7 years with Citibank’s Corporate Banking division managing diverse corporate financial products. My career trajectory has since afforded me extensive cross-border exposure across Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Northwest Pacific Islands, and Saudi Arabia, cultivating a deep understanding of multi-jurisdictional compliance, international financial systems, and cross-cultural leadership. Beyond my executive responsibilities in ensuring institutional transparency, I am deeply invested in studying public finance macroeconomic systems and the strategic integration of Islamic financial frameworks into modern global economies.
PAGE: What is your perspective about the constitutional mandate to eliminate interest (Riba) from the financial system in Pakistan by January 2028?
Imtiaz Ansari: The mandate to eliminate Riba by January 2028 is one of the most ambitious structural transformations in modern financial history. This is no longer just a legal directive; it is a massive operational and macroeconomic reality that the financial sector must actively absorb. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the government have shown serious intent following the Federal Shariat Court’s landmark 2022 ruling, which was formally locked into law via the 26th Constitutional Amendment in October 2024, setting the strict January 2028 deadline. However, achieving a 100% interest-free economy within this timeframe is a monumental task. It requires converting not just retail banking, but also the massive sovereign debt apparatus, national savings schemes, and international trade financing into Shariah-compliant frameworks. The success of this transition will depend heavily on the speed of innovation in asset-backed sovereign liquidity instruments and the capacity building of conventional banks rushing to convert their operations. While the timeline is aggressive, it serves as a powerful catalyst for financial innovation.
PAGE: Islamic banking in Pakistan accounts for over 25% of industry deposits. What is your standpoint on it?
Imtiaz Ansari: Crossing the 25% market share threshold proves that Islamic banking has moved from a niche segment to a mainstream economic driver, reflecting a strong alignment between public demand and regulatory support.
However, we must address the common public assumption that Islamic banking is merely a semantic shift—changing “interest” to “profit” while keeping the same mechanics. The reality is structurally entirely different. Conventional banking is fundamentally an exchange of money for money with no direct asset risk. Legitimate Islamic banking requires trade-backed or equity-backed transactions (Murabaha, Ijarah, Mudaraba) where the bank takes actual ownership risk of a physical asset or enterprise.
Moving forward, the industry must continue educating the public to dissolve this myth while penetrating underserved sectors like SMEs and agriculture. To see where this trajectory leads, we can look at Saudi Arabia, where Islamic banking forms the baseline at over 76% of total banking assets. The Saudi model shows that crossing the 25% threshold shifts growth from being purely retail-driven to being structurally institutionalized, where even legacy conventional giants like Saudi National Bank (SNB) run loan books that are over 80% Shariah-compliant.
PAGE: How would you elaborate the Shariah-compliant solutions ranging from personal financing to corporate Sukuk bonds?
Imtiaz Ansari: Shariah-compliant solutions are fully capable of matching—and in some aspects, improving upon—the utility of conventional banking, ranging from consumer retail products to sophisticated capital market instruments.
On the personal financing side, solutions anchor strictly in asset-backed transactions rather than direct money lending. For instance, instead of a conventional auto loan, Islamic banks utilize Murabaha (cost-plus markup sale) or Ijarah (leasing), where the bank legally purchases and owns the asset before transferring or leasing it to the consumer.
On a macro scale, the shift to Sukuk (Islamic bonds) has revolutionized public debt and corporate capital raising. Unlike conventional bonds, which are debt obligations promising a fixed interest coupon, a Sukuk represents an undivided ownership share in a tangible, income-generating underlying asset or project. Investors earn a share of actual profits. Living and working in Saudi Arabia, I see a prime example of this in how Saudi Arabia utilizes sovereign and corporate Sukuks to fund its Vision 2030 giga-projects. Furthermore, the Gulf has pioneered Green and Sustainable Sukuks, proving these instruments are uniquely positioned to capture global ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) capital by linking financial growth directly to real-world economic activity.
PAGE: How would you comment on the framework for integrating Islamic economic principles into Pakistan’s economy?
Imtiaz Ansari: Integrating Islamic economic principles requires a holistic framework that goes far beyond merely outlawing interest; it demands a fundamental shift toward an equity-based, risk-sharing, and asset-backed economic model. The SBP has laid a strong regulatory foundation through rigorous Shariah governance and the standardization of AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions) rules.
For true systemic integration, the framework must expand into two critical areas. First, we need a deeper transformation in public sector financial management, specifically how the government finances its fiscal deficit without relying on conventional treasury instruments. Second, the framework must incentivize financial inclusion by channeling Islamic liquidity into underserved, high-growth sectors like microfinance, agriculture, and SMEs.
Pakistan can draw highly practical lessons from the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). SAMA successfully managed this transition by establishing a Centralized Shariah Committee to standardize fatwas—eliminating market confusion—and by aggressively fostering Islamic FinTech through regulatory sandboxes. By marrying strict Shariah governance with cutting-edge digital banking, Saudi Arabia lowered customer-acquisition costs and modernized the system. Pakistan’s framework will succeed faster if it mimics this dual focus on centralized legal harmony and aggressive digital enablement.