Historically, women have been widely employed in Egypt's banks, with some now reaching top-level posts, including that of CEO. There is a way to go before total numbers achieve parity, however, as Kit Gillet reports.

Lobna Helal

Lobna Helal

Egypt’s banking sector has long shown the value of having women employed across the industry, including in high-level positions. Twenty Egyptian woman made Forbes Middle East’s 2018 list of the region’s 100 most influential women, with the likes of Dalia El-Baz, deputy chair of the National Bank of Egypt; Nevine El-Messeery, chief executive of Ahli United Bank; and Mervat Zohdy Soltan, chief executive of Export Development Bank of Egypt. 

Other names included Hania Sadek, chief operating officer and executive director of HSBC Bank Egypt; Halla Sakr, managing director of Attijariwafa Bank Egypt; and Soha El-Turky, chief financial officer at Banque du Caire.

Meanwhile, a November 2017 Forbes list focusing on the 25 most powerful Egyptian businesswomen featured 10 women involved in the banking and financial services sector.

Ahead of the curve

This level of involvement goes back decades. “When the open-door policy started under president Anwar Sadat [in the 1970s], with the introduction of private banks and joint-venture banks, the recruits at the time were equally men and women, and a lot of these women performed extraordinary well and went up the ranks with their male counterparts,” says Mohamed Ozalp, managing director and chief executive of Blom Bank Egypt.

Perhaps the most prominent woman in Egypt’s banking sector today is Lobna Helal, the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), who was first appointed in 2011 and again in 2015, after a brief period away from the bank. “I see me being the first female deputy governor of the CBE as the starting point for many more to hold this role in the future,” Ms Helal told a local student newspaper in 2018.

The central bank has played an important role in promoting women, instigating several initiatives and programmes, including ‘Women Leading the Future’, launched in early 2018 in partnership with the Forum of the 50 Most Influential Women and the Egyptian Banking Institute. One programme aims to transfer knowledge from current senior-level executives to a new generation of women working across different fields.

“The government and CBE, specifically, are actively committed to promoting fair opportunities for all,” says Pakinam Essam, chief risk officer at Commercial International Bank, Egypt’s largest private bank. Ms Essam, who is also a member of Commercial International Bank’s management committee, adds that banking is one of the most competitive industries in Egypt when it comes to value proposition for talent. “[So] it is normal that the top candidates in the workplace, which happen to be overwhelmingly females, find their way into the banking industry.”

In January 2019, Commercial International Bank became the first Arab and African company to be included in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index (GEI), a comprehensive data source on gender equality. The bank also recently introduced a ‘Women in Tech’ initiative, aimed at addressing the gender gap in technology areas of the bank’s operations, in order to create a pool of future female tech workers and management.

Meaning business

The banking sector is also heavily involved in promoting the growth of women-led start-ups and businesses. In September 2018, Banque Misr, Egypt’s second largest bank in terms of Tier 1 capital, signed an agreement with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) to help increase the number of women-led businesses in its small and medium-sized enterprise banking portfolio.

Nevine Gamea, chief executive of Egypt’s Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency, who herself featured in Forbes’ list of the top 10 women heading government departments last year, said that in 2018, 49% of the projects funded by her agency were for women. Meanwhile, cabinet changes in 2018 resulted in eight female ministers holding office in Egypt, a record number for the country.

Still, there is a way to go. A March 2019 study by the IFC found that while 47% of companies in Egypt have female board members, women represent just 14% of the total. Even in the banking sector there is still plenty of work to be done.

“The representation of women is quite high in Egypt’s banking sector,” says Elena Sanchez-Cabezudo, head of financials and equity research at EFG Hermes, a financial services group headquartered in Cairo. “A lot of middle management bankers left to go to the Gulf in the 1990s and 2000s, and women filled some of these positions. That played a role, but there’s definitely much more to do,” she adds.

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