Amin Manji
CTO/Group Chief Information Technology Group at National Bank of Pakistan
As Head of IT and CTO at the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), Amin Manji has a host of responsibilities channelled into the bank’s core, overarching objective – to ensure its technology strategy, vision and roadmap actively propel business objectives with speed and agility.
“I am an executive first and a technologist second,” says Amin, who juggles Team Leadership & Growth, IT Strategy & Strategic Oversight, Cybersecurity & Governance, Transformation & Innovation, and Operational Management on his mission to enable the success of his fellow team members.
“I believe that technology is primarily about people,” he continues, “followed by planning and process at a close second.
“In my role as Head of Technology, I spend a significant portion of my day interacting and engaging with team members across the group to better understand what drives them, to hear issues they may be facing, where their interests lie and how they seek to grow so we are better able to offer them roles more suited to their individual interests.”
It’s clear that people come first for Amin – but he is also devoted to his responsibilities for planning and processing, a core aspect of IT governance given the complex nature of emerging technologies and the need to stay compliant with the latest regulations.
This can be particularly challenging, given the speed at which regulations evolve and change. Add to this the need to ensure cybersecurity, data privacy, cross-border payments and transactions adhere to global standards, and that all new technologies employed are scalable, robust, resilient, fault-tolerant, open, extendible and designed with futureproofing in mind, and the challenge can seem daunting.
Though, thanks to his extensive experience across technology and finance, Amin has the skills to deal with these challenges.
“Delivering to the need of the moment requires presence of mind, ingenuity, rational analysis of an unfolding situation, decision making under pressure and the ability to take decisions and own them,” he says.
“More often than not, there are no right answers; just courses of action based on the information at hand, a rational analysis of what the information is possibly telling us and the ability to critically evaluate what the analysis reveals.”
Successfully navigating these challenges allows Amin to take great joy in his role, particularly when it comes to developing and leveraging the latest innovative projects.
Using leading edge and diverse technology, real-time 24x7x365, always-on multi-channel services and the opportunity to develop products and solutions for stringent and complex requirements in short turnaround times represents an exciting proposition for Amin.
“A sophisticated tech ecosystem, training, development and growth opportunities, and an incredibly smart cohort of team members to boot, make this industry an enjoyable place for me and I have been fortunate to have discovered it early in my career,” he continues.
“I also enjoy engaging frequently and regularly with business group heads to understand their challenges, competitive imperatives, product roadmaps and evolving strategies to propose and shape solutions through a technology lens.”
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