Group Captain Abu Zafar Chowdhury, GDP, psc, (Retried) was born on 8th February 1953 at Harualchari in the district of Chattogram. He joined the War of Liberation in 1971 at the age of 18. He Fought in Sector 01. He joined Bangladesh Air Force on 14th December 1972 as a flight cadet. He was sent to the former USSR and was trained in the Warsaw Standard Frunze Military Academy. After completion of 3 years of rigorous training, he became an operational pilot. He got all excellent marks (5) in USSR standard education including flying. In addition, received the diploma as Russian English military interpreter diploma. He holds the rare honour of wearing 7 Star medal for the highest-flying hours and instructional hours in Bangladesh air force without any accident incidents. He was deputized to the Iraqi Air Force for two years as a flying instructor. From 1976 till mid-1980 he fought the counter-insurgency operation in Chattogram, Hill Tracks (Operation Typhoon) as a helicopter pilot. 

After having served for over two decades in Bangladesh Air Force he retired and took over The Dhaka Mercantile Co-operative Bank Limited (DMCBL) as Chairman in 2002. In 2002 this bank had only 7 Branches with a deposit of sixty lac Taka or One lac five thousand US Dollars. An air force fighter pilot turned a Banker, under his magnificent leadership, DMCB became vibrant in the co-operative sector. Over next two decades he expanded the Bank to all over Bangladesh; Currently, DMCB has 134 Branches with a per year rollover of Two Thousand crore taka or two billion USD.

A few statistical facts will better manifest the achievement of Group Captain Abu Zafar Chowdhury (Retired). In the year 2001 the number of total branches was 8. Now In 2022 it has gone up to 136 branches. DMCBL had 212 employees in 2002. Now in 2022 it has a workforce of 3100. In 2001 the average salary was 700 Taka or 12 Dollar. Now in 2022 it has gone up to average 40,000 Taka or 500 USD. During the Covid-19 pandemic, not a single employee has been laid off from this cooperative bank. The chairman of DMCB also has been instructed to pay full salary and benefits to his employees. The internal medical team of DMCB has been providing free treatment and medicine to Covid 19 affected employees of DMCB. During this Covid19 pandemic, DMCB has been courageously running its operation all over Bangladesh and serving DMCBL’s members properly.  The family members of DMCB’s late employees who have died because of the Covid 19 virus have been compensated with 11,700 US Dollar each and one of the family members of each family has been given a job in this bank. Under the able and dynamic leadership DMCB creates one job opportunities for employees per 45 hours. It establishes a branch every 45 days.

There are around 0.2 million co-operatives with having more than 10 million members across the country. The co-operatives are regulated by the Department of Cooperatives in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development of Bangladesh. The co-operative bank is designed to work for its members who are the owners of the bank and who are the beneficiaries of its success.

The DMCB has tailor-made financial solutions for mass members including women, housewives, senior citizens, prospective hajj pilgrims, farmers, self-employed youths, micro and small entrepreneurs and female entrepreneurs aiming to bring more un-banked people into the co-operative banking network. While providing members with cutting-edge co-operative banking services, the DMCB ensures compliance with the Shariah Principles and upholds Islamic culture. Its Shariah Supervisory Committee supervises all its operations from an independent and critical point of view. Since inception, the DMCB has been contributing to serve the distressed members, improvement of education, extending health and Medicare facilities, promoting art, culture, literature, science, technology and sports as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to help the socioeconomic condition of Bangladesh.

The vision with which the Bank works are as below:

1. Reducing poverty, creating employment opportunities and improving of socio-economic condition through co-operative activities are prime motto of the DMCB.
2. The DMCB has already emerged as a pioneer co-operative bank in Bangladesh and contributes significantly to achieve sustainable economic growth of the country.
3. To be the leading dedicated co-operative bank for marginal, small and middle income groups of Bangladesh to encourage investment particularly in productive sectors, which are contributing to create higher employment opportunities across the country.

The missions of the bank are:

1. To ensure fast, accurate and satisfactory member service.
2. Empowering real poor families and creating local income opportunities.
3. To collect deposits from the members and invest the funds in profitable businesses among the members across the country.
4. To provide funds as working capital to the small and medium entrepreneur members.
5. To create employment opportunities through investment in the different productive sectors.
6. To extend collateral-free investments among the DMCB’s members.
7. To encourage the members for depositing their hard-earned money by offering various attractive savings schemes.
8. Introducing innovative Islamic co-operative banking products.

The goals of the Bank are:

1. Transformation into a service-oriented technology-driven profit earning financial institution.
2. Balanced and sustainable growth strategy for ensuring optimum return on shareholders’ equity.
3. To achieve global standards in Islamic co-operative banking.
4. To improve the socio-economic condition of the members through enhancing investments in different productive and service sectors including micro, small and medium businesses and trading.
5. To deliver product and services that creates value for the members.
6. To conduct our business within well defined risk tolerance level.
7. To reduce unemployment pressures on the economy by investing and augmenting in economic activities that help creating employment opportunities across the country.
8. Encouraging and motivating to the new members to establish businesses which help achieving maximum economic growth.
9. To enhance savings tendency of the members by offering attractive and lucrative new savings scheme.
10. Promoting the mobilization of savings both from urban and rural areas of Bangladesh.
11. To extend security-free investments among the members in line with the co-operative society’s rules and regulations.

The bank bears the slogan “Trust is our collateral”. It is amazing to see how innovative small entrepreneurs were entertained by this bank those who do not have access to the normal banking. More amazing is the model that they are accustomed to. They take a certain amount of loan and pay back in small installment from the day after receipt of their loan. Astonishingly, they are true to their trust as the defaulters are in the range of 2%. It is amazing to note how altruistically the bank is helping people of the lower strata of our country to graduate from poor economic class to a better one. This co-operative bank has 3 lac and 50,000 members which is a great testimony of the Bank’s humongous success.

Group Captain Abu Zafar Chowdhury has built up this organization with meritorious acumen. Around 3,100 smart and dedicated officers and employees have been serving its members of the Bank.

The corporate cultures the Bank has grown among the employees over last two decades are unique. The employees work dawn to dusk with full devotion keeping in mind,” the members are the king- serving them is our priority”. The new breed of Investment officers has taken the service of the Bank to its members’ doorstep with a vow to give a hassle free service. All the employees feel a strong bondage with each other as a team and with the Bank as well. Because the Bank extends a very strong safety net for the employees in all aspects starting from monitory benefit with a substantially attractive salary package to welfare of the family members to an assurance of ready help in case of illness or any accident.

This Bank’s Hall mark is in the field of “women empowerment”. There are 30% female employees in this Bank. It takes pride in announcing that this Bank is a place for any woman to work with full security, honor and dignity. There is no word like “workplace harassment or abuse” for the female employees. The Managing Director is the pivot of the Bank who is a lady. Who can deny the Human Resource Department is a vital department for any organization; a lady is in charge here. Ladies are cool headed and makes less mistake in calculation, so the head of the Central Account department is being led by another female officer. The management has been keeping full trust on another female officer who is leading the Financial Administration Department. There are handful numbers of female officers contributing their talent and acumen in Investment, Logistics, Recovery, IT, Share, Stationary, Central Accounts Departments, Audit departments of the Bank. These all have been meticulously planned and executed by Group Captain Abu Zafar Chowdhury, therefore, the Bank and him are intertwined in a single thread.