HabibMetro Sirat Review — Halal Finance Products

Habib Metropolitan Bank — HABIBMETRO, the Pakistani subsidiary of Swiss-incorporated Habib Bank AG Zurich — embarked on Islamic banking in the fourth quarter of 2004 and formally launched the SIRAT brand in August 2014, when the network stood at nine dedicated Islamic branches. Sirat is now a five-country brand across the HBZ group (Switzerland, UAE, UK, South Africa, Pakistan), and its UK window has won 'Best Islamic Banking Window in the UK' two years running. In Pakistan, the bank's own May 2026 PDF lists 311 Islamic Banking Windows spanning Karachi to Gilgit-Baltistan; a dedicated-branch list exists too, but no aggregate branch number is published — a familiar disclosure blind spot.

Sirat's governance paperwork is the segment benchmark. Where peers publish one omnibus fatwa, Sirat's fatwa page carries the board's Shariah certificate plus dedicated fatwas for its Islamic deposit products, auto finance, consumer home finance (Diminishing Musharakah), and treasury products — each in English and Urdu. The board itself is compact: Chairman Mufti Muhammad Najeeb Khan (who also chairs Bank Makramah's board and sits on Faysal Bank's and Sindh Bank's, plus the UBL Al Ameen and NBP Islamic fund committees), Resident Member Mufti Khawaja Noor ul Hassan (a working-group member of AAOIFI's Governance and Ethics Board and SBP's AAOIFI standards committee, formerly resident scholar at Standard Chartered Saadiq and Faysal), and Mufti Abdul Sattar Laghari. One cosmetic flag: the page's intro still says 'two renowned Islamic Scholars' while listing three — stale copy on an otherwise strong page.

The numbers tell a two-sided story. On deposits, June 2026 declarations put a uniform 8.48% on virtually every retail savings variant — standard savings, ladies, Asaan, RDA, Junior Savers, Privilege 55+, salary accounts — the highest standard rate we verified among the majors, with the promotional Islamic Saving Plus at 9.81%. Term certificates (HIIC) ran 5.69–7.91% with a telling inversion: one-year money at 7.91% out-yielded five-year at 6.90%, the bank pricing long tenors defensively against expected rate cuts. On financing, SIRAT Home Finance offers the full product — PKR 500,000 to 100 million, 1–25 years, up to 80% of property value, four variants including plot+construction and balance transfer, its own bilingual fatwa — but not the price: no rental rate, spread, or fee appears on the page, and eligibility gates at 27 years of age and PKR 75,000 monthly income sit above several peers. The auto finance page is thinner still: navigation and a fatwa, no published terms. Business financing spans Murabaha, Diminishing Musharakah, Ijarah, Istisna, Salam, and working-capital Musharakah plus the SBP Islamic refinance schemes.