Client Name

HBL

Faculty Advisor

Dr. Mujeeb U Rehman Bhayo

SBS Thought Leadership Areas

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

SBS Thought Leadership Area Justification

This ELP falls under the Entrepreneurship and Innovation thought leadership area of IBA's Suleman Dawood School of Business. The way of reasoning is straightforward. Redesigning a traditional process in banking by adopting digital design and fintech principles. A form of institutional entrepreneurship with regard to Pakistan's biggest commercial bank. The results of our work go towards building a collective dialogue on ways financial institutions in emerging markets can work to address access and inclusion challenges by leveraging technology. If we can create something good that HBL introduces then the project has gotten the ball moving in that discussion

Aligned SDGs

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Aligned SDGs Justification

SDG 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, as the selected prototype is an operational demonstration of the modernisation of legacy banking through fintech and its introduction to the digital economy.

NDA

No

Abstract

24% of Pakistan’s GDP can be traced back to the agricultural sector and more than 37% of the labour force finds employment in it. Yet, formal credit remains out of reach for the majority of small to medium sized farmers who sustain this sector. This Experiential Learning Project, in collaboration with Habib Bank Limited (HBL), was assigned to address an aspect of this problem: designing a fully digital agri-financing platform that can improve credit access, reducing loan processing time and strengthening the risk assessment of small to medium sized farmers nationwide.

The project began in February 2026 and was completed in May 2026, it was carried out in four phases. The initial phase was to conduct secondary market research, then conduct a feasibility analysis, re-engineering the loan process and finally developing the prototype. This study combined benchmarking five main competitors in Pakistan, interviews with 15 to 20 rural farmers conducted via telephone, a consultation with Farmdar (Lahore based agri-tech company that specialises in satellite-based crop intelligence) and carefully mapping out the loan process. During the mid-review stage, HBL asked the team to stop working on a new product for them and instead focus on building the digital prototype.

The main deliverable is the HBL Kisaan App, a fifteen screen interactive prototype of HBL’s agri-loan process fully digitised. It is built in HTML and CSS and was mapped to HBL’s official AFAP form, which is set with certain constraints imposed by SBP’s Prudential Regulations for Agriculture Financing (State Bank of Pakistan, 2015). Some supporting deliverables include a Python based credit scoring script and also a phased strategic roadmap for the implementation of the app.

It was found that the pre-approval phase of HBL’s agricultural loan process can be significantly digitised without any regulatory breach. According to existing law, certain post-approval steps such as signing the IB-7 agreement (standardised loan contract created by State Bank of Pakistan) and the physical registration of legal claim on land at the Revenue Office, must remain as is. Interviews conducted with farmers provided insight on what deters many of them from formal means of loan taking, for most part the excessive documentation, frequent branch visits and most importantly the access to a faster means of credit albeit informal, acts as barriers. Competitive analysis positioned Bank of Punjab’s (BoP) CM Kissan Card as the biggest threat to HBL due to its government support, digital-physical integration and quick adoption. Urgency for HBL to enter the digital agri-lending space began with the launch of the Zarkhez-e platform, which is supported by the government of Pakistan.

Document Type

Restricted Access

Document Name for Citation

Experiential Learning Project

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