With more than 30 years of banking experience in the areas of risk and corporate banking, Hisham Okasha joined NBE in April 2008 as Deputy Chairman responsible for the Risk, Operations, Compliance and Audit functions.
His role at the helm of National Bank of Egypt (NBE):
Okasha has been the Chairman of National Bank of Egypt (NBE) since August 2013 after holding the position of acting Chairman from February 2013.
During his term as Deputy Chairman, he had played an instrumental role in restructuring the functions that he supervised. Such restructuring was an integral part of the Banking Reform Program embarked on by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE).
During his tenure at the head of the state owned bank, the National Bank of Egypt broke the trillion-pound barrier regarding the volume of assets which has qualified the bank to be positioned the 13th among the list of the 30 largest banks in Africa and the 222nd in the list of the 1000 largest banks in the world.
The bank also has succeeded in achieving net profit of 20 billion Egyptian pounds to become the largest state-owned economic corporation.
NBE was also ranked among the top 5 banks in Africa and among the top 10 Arab banks, during the successful years that Okasha has managed since taking responsibility of the bank.
Since assuming the position of acting Chairman from February 2013, Okasha has led the NBE to achieving unprecedented performance; the bank’s assets portfolio increased from 340.7 billion pounds at the end of December 2012 to 2.2 trillion pounds in November 2020 with a record growth rate of 545 percent.
In addition, the bank’s loans portfolio increased from 98.8 billion pounds at the end of 2012 to 900 billion pounds at the end of November 2020, with a growth rate of 811 percent.
Futhermore, The bank’s net profit doubled from 2.8 billion pounds during the 2011/2012 fiscal year to 20.2 billion pounds during FY 2018/2019, with an increase of 621 percent, which means that the bank’s profits have more than doubled 6 times in just 7 years!
NBE has also implemented a plan for geographical expansion that included strengthening the bank local presence to easily reach all the Egyptians and achieve financial inclusion; the number of branches during Hisham Okasha tenure increased to more than 510 branches, providing its services to more than 14 million customers. The branches include 10 electronic branches which considered being the first in the Egyptian market.
The bank was also been able to embrace cashless payments successfully; the number of e-wallet customers reached 1.5 million, with transactions exceeding 800 million pounds, and the number of customers using Al-Ahly Net and Mobile Banking services reached more than 4.7 million users with financial transactions amounting to nearly 7 billion pounds until mid-2020.
Okasha roles in other key roles in several reputable Financial and Regulatory Institutions:
He has assumed a number of key roles in several reputable Financial and Regulatory Institutions; among which has been the Head of the Offsite Supervision Unit at CBE.
He is also the Deputy Chairman of the Federation of Egyptian Banks and sits on the boards of a number of NBE’s financial subsidiaries in Egypt, as well as in Europe and the MENA region.
Okasha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Computer Science from the American University in Cairo and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the same University. He is a holder of a project finance diploma from Harvard Institute for International Development.
