The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has integrated its company registration portal with Askari Bank, allowing new companies to select a bank and begin the account opening process directly through the same platform used for corporate registration. The update was highlighted by Shaikh Raashed Rauf, Group Head of Retail Banking at Askari Bank Limited, who explained how the integration works for businesses registering with SECP and what it changes for new companies going through the process. The move connects two systems that were previously handled separately, giving business owners a single digital workflow to complete both registration and the initial steps of opening a corporate account.
Under the integration, a company completing its registration on the SECP portal can now choose its bank and initiate account opening within the same session, rather than finishing registration first and then approaching a bank branch separately to start the account opening process. The system links SECP’s registration data directly with Askari Bank’s onboarding process, which the bank said removes much of the paperwork that has traditionally accompanied opening a corporate account after incorporation. This kind of integration is intended to shorten the gap between registering a business and having a functional bank account, a delay that has historically slowed new companies trying to begin operations in Pakistan. By pulling verified registration details straight into the bank’s onboarding system, the integration also reduces the chances of mismatched or duplicated information between the two processes.
SECP and Askari Bank described the collaboration as part of a broader effort to improve the ease of doing business in Pakistan, an area regulators and financial institutions have been working on jointly for several years through various digitization initiatives. By linking registration and banking systems directly, the integration cuts down the number of separate steps a business owner needs to complete manually, reducing repeated data entry and document submission across two previously disconnected processes. The change reflects a pattern seen elsewhere in Pakistan’s regulatory environment, where agencies have increasingly worked with banks and financial institutions to connect systems that once operated independently of one another. For entrepreneurs and small business owners in particular, the reduction in manual steps could make the early stages of setting up a company noticeably less time consuming.
No details were shared on how many companies have used the integrated account opening feature since it became available, or on whether SECP plans to extend similar integrations to other banks beyond Askari Bank. The announcement did not include a specific timeline for a wider rollout, though the framing from both SECP and Askari Bank suggested the collaboration is intended as an early step in a broader effort to connect business registration with banking services more directly across Pakistan’s corporate sector. If the model is extended to additional banks, it could mark a shift in how new businesses in Pakistan experience the transition from incorporation to operational readiness.
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