Fifteen years across Pakistan's banking sector
Head of PMO, Governance and Digital Transformation
Faris builds the governance architecture that lets banks run complex, regulator led transformation without losing control of risk, budget or timeline. He currently leads the PMO and serves as Secretary to the Board IT Committee at Habib Metropolitan Bank.
Secretary, Board IT Committee
Habib Metropolitan Bank
Who he is
A PMO and transformation leader who turns strategy into outcomes the board can measure, through governance, portfolio discipline and organizational alignment.
Faris has spent his career inside the machinery of Pakistan's largest banks, building the governance layer that sits between ambition and delivery. He has stood up enterprise PMOs from nothing twice, at JS Bank and at Habib Metropolitan Bank, and in both cases turned a collection of disconnected initiatives into a portfolio the board could actually see, question and trust.
His specialization is the unglamorous part of transformation: the frameworks, the reporting lines, the audit trails and the change controls that let technology investment survive contact with a regulator. He works comfortably at board level and at the level of a stalled migration, and treats both as the same problem viewed at different altitudes.
The journey
Head of PMO · Secretary, Board IT Committee
Provides enterprise wide oversight of a portfolio of more than twenty five concurrent projects and regulatory programmes, and personally shapes the agenda for board level technology and investment decisions.
ISO/IEC 27001 Provisional Auditor, PECB, 2024
Head, Enterprise Project Management Office
Built the Enterprise PMO from a blank page into a strategic partner to executive leadership, with a delivery framework covering strategic initiatives, business change and technology transformation across the bank.
CMMI Framework, 2017 · Scrum Master and Agile CSPO, 2019
Senior Manager, IT Innovation
Ran the Product Office and Business Analysis Unit, the interface between what the business wanted and what technology could actually ship. Introduced agile delivery disciplines, standups, sprint reviews and retrospectives, into a function that had never used them.
Diploma in Project Management, PIM · COBIT5 Foundation, 2016
Manager, Project Management Office
Helped establish the PMO and its first portfolio wide performance metrics and executive dashboards. Served as Secretary to the IT Change Control Committee, learning to weigh technology change against risk and rollback before it ever reached a committee table.
PMP Workshop, IBA, 2015
RF Executive
Started in network planning and optimization, contributing to BTS modernization for 3G readiness and KPI audits across the national network. The place he learned that good infrastructure is invisible, and bad infrastructure is everyone's emergency.
What he does
Design and run the office that governs an entire portfolio, not just one project at a time.
Translate a business strategy into a programme structure with owners, milestones and a way to know if it worked.
Deliver large scale, multi year initiatives without losing sight of budget, risk or the board's patience.
Guide core banking and digital channel programmes through phased migration, vendor risk and platform complexity.
Build the maturity model and the habits that make delivery repeatable rather than heroic.
Turn programme data into board level intelligence that supports a real decision, not just a status update.
Signature achievements
Challenge
The PMO lacked standardization. Projects were reported inconsistently, and the board had no single view of portfolio health.
Actions
Outcome
Challenge
The bank had no enterprise PMO. Strategic initiatives, business improvement work and technology transformation ran as separate, uncoordinated efforts with no shared framework or executive visibility.
Actions
Outcome
The office became a genuine strategic partner to executive leadership, feeding directly into business planning and multi year investment decisions. The same operating model became the starting point for the PMO he later built at Habib Metropolitan Bank.
Core competencies
Certified ISO/IEC 27001 Provisional Auditor (PECB) · PMP Workshop, IBA · Professional Scrum Master & Agile CSPO · COBIT5 Foundation · CMMI Framework
Leadership philosophy
A framework only works if the people running it believe in it. Faris builds governance with the teams who will live inside it, not on top of them.
Opinions are welcome in the room. Budget and risk decisions are not made on them. Every recommendation he brings to a board is built on a number he can defend.
The purpose of a governance framework is not control for its own sake. It is to make sure the right people can see what is actually happening, early enough to act on it.
A strategy document is a hypothesis. Faris's job is to build the programme structure that turns it into something the bank can actually deliver and measure.
Testimonials
This section is reserved for testimonials from people Faris has worked alongside on boards, in committees and inside delivery teams. New entries are added once reviewed.
Get in touch
For board and executive conversations, speaking engagements or a direct introduction, send a note below. Faris reads every message himself.