Apart from providing banking products and services, banks often give back to their customers as part of their social responsibilities, often to look after their wellbeing.
Standard Chartered, one of the leading international banks, attempted to maintain that responsibility amid the Covid-19 pandemic despite various hardships faced by everyone.
After holding a local session on business ethics earlier this year, Standard Chartered Saadiq, the bank's Islamic banking unit, held a global webinar recently for the first time on the lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was the second session held under the Living Islam banner, a platform that brings Islamic scholars and experts to talk about Islamic topics that are part of everyday life, said a press release.
Two of Standard Chartered Saadiq’s Shariah scholars, Sheikh Nizam Yaquby from Bahrain and Aznan Hasan from Malaysia, participated in a panel discussing how Islam provides guidance to live a peaceful and stable life, irrespective of the circumstances and giving new perspective to all that is happening around us.
Among the topics covered during this session were mental wellbeing and maintaining a balanced life guided by Islamic principles.
The inaugural session was held back in February, which discussed about taking inspiration from the life of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), differentiating between manmade ethics and Islamic ethics and axioms of business ethics in Islam and more.
Sabbir Ahmed, head of retail banking at Standard Chartered Bangladesh, said that they wanted to maintain a meaningful footprint in their customers' lives and the Islamic Living webinar series was a key example of that effort.
The bank has led the way in Islamic Banking by introducing a number of ‘firsts’, from introducing the first Islamic credit card in 2007 to arranging the first Sukuk transaction in the market in 2019.