Accounting and Reporting Practices of Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd.

Abstract

In early part of this decade, the IBBL management realized that although IBBL was the largest Bank in the Bangladesh in terms of turnover; when it came to profitability, IBBL ranked a mere 1st. This, for the management, was not simply good enough. So efforts were put in as to find out what could be done to better improve profitability for the group. As expected, the price of its services became the key factor which could impact profitability. However, the solution was not as simple as to just to increase the price and have greater margin. In a very competitive market environment where the awareness level of consumers is increasing day by day, raising price did not provide an easy way out. Consumers, shoppers and customers and in many cases, the government would react unfavorably to any price increase which they would consider as not value for money; the result of which would be loss of sales volume and market share. Therefore, the issue of optimum pricing became a goal for every brand manager and subsequently company management all over the country for IBBL. So IBBL developed a pricing toolkit called, “Finance & Promotional Strategies of IBBL” which would provide through guidelines and Strategies substance to the complicated task of pricing. This toolkit provides a 5 step exercise before any pricing decisions are made and involves almost all possible factors which are related to price. IBBL Bangladesh has been operating in Bangladesh for more than decade and pricing for its services has become very important in the ever increasing competitive market place. However, as we find out in the report, not all the aspects of the “Finance & Promotional Strategies of IBBL” is followed here. The reasons are many fold- including non-mandatory nature of the toolkit, over- emphasis on certain business goals such as EBIT, RIG (Real Internal Growth) and OG (Organic growth) and less emphasis on other score cards such as market share and brand equity. The recommendation of the report is that IBBL should be a bit more consumer driven in pricing decision. This is not to say that the price should always be as less as possible, but merely means that more research and study should be done to understand the pricing impact from the consumers end. Another recommendation was that some of the exercises of the “IBBL & Promotional Strategies of IBBL” should be made mandatory and not just a fancy exercise which is “Good to have”.