Waseem Hashmi

Pakistan Mortgage Refinance Company

Pakistan Mortgage Refinance Company (PMRC) is set up as a mortgage liquidity facility to address the long-term funding constraint in the banking sector, which was hindering the growth of the primary mortgage market. PMRC is a secure source of long-term funding at attractive rates and at the same time ensuring sound lending habits amongst the primary mortgage lenders (PMLs). Its thrust is three-fold: help reduce maturity mismatch risk for PMLs, increase the availability of fixed rate mortgages and increase the maturity structure of the mortgage loans. This in turn would not only help improve the affordability of mortgages but also increase the number of qualifying borrowers. PMRC will play a key role in providing medium and long-term funding to both conventional and Islamic PMLs. These initiatives will result in an expansion of the primary mortgage market. As the Company's principal source of funding will be from the local bond market, another important objective of the Company is to pioneer the development of the local bond and sukuk markets.