What it does: consumer loans, deposit and savings products, investment banking, corporate financial services, SME financing and wealth management.
Best known for: IPDC Finance was the first private sector non-bank financial institution (NBFI) in Bangladesh.
Staff stats: Around 600 employees in 12 branches.
The good bits: The IPDC Management Trainee Programme can hasten your promotion to a junior management or management position within two years.
The not so good bits: Not much is known about the company’s salary structure and compensation package.
Hiring grads with top marks in: Accounting, Banking and Finance; Human Resources and Legal; Marketing and Sales; Business and Economics; Computer Engineering and Science.
A group of shareholders, that included the Bangladeshi government, established IPDC Finance in 1981. The company was incorporated as a public limited company under the Companies Act 1913 (now known as Companies Act 1994). In 1995, IPDC gained its licence as a financial institution under the Financial Institutions Act 1993. The company went public on the Dhaka Stock Exchange and Chittagong Stock Exchange by 2006.
Their operations focus on two key areas: financing different projects and providing investment solutions. IPDC’s services benefit different industries such as education and healthcare groups. The institution also relies on several principles for its investments, including job and income generation, supporting revenue growth for the government, foreign exchange savings or earnings, and environment management and risk assessment.
These guiding principles allowed the company to have 12 branches in Bangladesh, where they serve more than 6,800 customers as of 2019. The company’s loan and deposit portfolios in the same year reached BDT 46.5 billion and BDT 40.2 billion, respectively.
The company accepts students for a three-month internship. Interested applicants can apply for full-time roles by sending an email to career@ipdcbd.com. You can still enquire even if there are no relevant vacancies that match your profile. IPDC Finance also advertises available positions online.
Some full-time roles, such as an assistant manager for the credit analyst division, don’t require work experience, but you must be a Qualified Chartered Accountant and have a bachelor’s degree. If you only have the latter, you can apply as an assistant executive for the procurement and payment processing unit.
Bachelor of Law graduates should have at least two years of experience before they pursue an assistant executive/executive role for the legal affairs group. Senior executives/ assistant managers for the talent acquisition department should have at least four years of experience.
Several other positions only require a bachelor’s degree in any field, which is important if you wish to be considered for the IPDC Management Trainee Programme. The company places trainees in different projects and roles that will test their leadership and collaborative skills.
The company doesn’t disclose salary information, although you can negotiate the base salary for certain roles. Accounting and finance employees in Bangladesh earn an average of BDT 55,700 per month. Recent graduates should expect to earn between BDT 25,000 and BDT 37,000 depending on the position.
You can expect a diverse work environment that hinges on non-traditional ways to accomplish tasks, despite being a long-time financial institution. Work-life balance exists in most departments and there are several employees below 30 years old as well.
IPDC’s competitors in the NBFI sector include Bay Leasing, BD Finance, Fas Finance, International Leasing Finance, Prime Finance, and Premier Finance.
The company has different corporate social responsibility programmes that focus on culture, education, emergencies, environment, health and well-being, recreation and sanitation. IPDC partnered with Light and Hope in 2016 to build libraries in nine schools for the benefit of around 300 students.
The company donated BDT 500,000 in the same year to the UCEP Institute of Science and Technology. The financial support helped with the vocational education of underprivileged children
In 2019, IPDC Finance requested the Bangladesh Bank limit several banks’ deposit and withdrawal activity. The crisis involving People’s Leasing and Financial Services’ liquidation elicited concern among consumers, who have pulled out their money from IPDC Finance and other NBFIs.
The central bank advised the sector to pursue alternative funding sources, like bonds, to reduce their reliance on banks. IPDC Finance and other institutions make money by borrowing from banks to issue long-term loans, aside from depending on consumer deposit accounts. However, negative consumer confidence in NBFIs has taken a toll on their businesses, as institutions pay higher interest on bank loans without generating profits from deposit accounts.
The EBL Securities’ report showed that NBFIs paid BDT 46.71 billion in interest payments in the first nine months of 2019. Interest payments in the same period of 2018 reached BDT 41.52 billion. Deposits only amounted to BDT 50.13 billion as of September 2019, down 2.83 per cent year over year.
Graduates only need at least two years to advance their careers at IPDC Finance, if they can prove themselves to be a good fit for the job. You should expect competition to be quite tough among management trainees and note that some employees claim that the company offers higher entry-level salaries than its competitors.