BRAC Bank TARA turns 9 with 500,000 women customers

BRAC Bank’s women-focused banking proposition TARA has reached around 500,000 customers in nine years, now accounting for about 25 per cent of the country’s retail banking deposits held by women.
Launched on May 4, 2017, TARA has evolved into a two-part ecosystem—TARA Retail and TARA SME—supporting women from first-time banking to running and scaling businesses, the bank said in a release.
TARA Retail serves more than 350,000 customers across all eight divisions, with deposits exceeding Tk14,000 crore.
The segment has expanded its customer base more than 80 times and deposits more than 60 times since launch, driven by products such as the Homemaker Account, which removes income-proof requirements, and the TARA Virtual Savings Account offering fully digital banking.
About 98 per cent of new customers are onboarded digitally through electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC).
The bank also runs initiatives linked to events such as Mother’s Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and International Women’s Day, alongside a TARA Ambassador Training programme that trained 120 frontline staff in 2025 on gender-specific service approaches.
TARA SME supports over 128,000 women entrepreneurs, with a loan portfolio exceeding Tk2,600 crore and deposits of more than Tk2,800 crore.
The segment recorded 17 per cent asset growth and 72 per cent deposit growth in the latest year, while maintaining a non-performing loan ratio of 1.14 per cent.
Programmes such as TARA Uddokta Mela have hosted four events with over 300 entrepreneurs, while Uddokta 101 has trained more than 500 participants across 19 cohorts in business management, digital marketing, taxation, and market linkage.
Amrai TARA has reached 1,200 entrepreneurs across 33 districts, while Uddog TARA engages over 1,000 women annually through market enlistment and digital training.
The WSME Branch Training programme covers 191 branches across 64 districts, training more than 2,000 women each year in financial literacy and documentation.
More than 2,000 entrepreneurs have also received a one-year enterprise resource planning subscription to digitise business operations.
Globally, BRAC Bank has received seven awards from the Financial Alliance for Women, a New York-based network of 81 financial institutions across 135 countries, including repeated Women’s Market Champion Engagement Asia awards and the Gender Data Champion award in 2025.
It also won Platinum awards at the Global SME Finance Awards 2024, organised by the International Finance Corporation and the SME Finance Forum under the World Bank Group, for product innovation in both global and Asia categories.
“TARA was built on the conviction that women are not a niche to be served, but a market to be served well,” said BRAC Bank Managing Director and CEO Tareq Refat Ullah Khan, adding the proposition continues to expand its role in financial inclusion.