Agha Hasan Abedi founded the bank in 1959 and under his leadership, it became the second largest bank in Pakistan. In 1974, the Government of Pakistan nationalized the bank. This, in turn, led to Agha Hasan Abedi founding the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
In 2002, the Government of Pakistan sold 51 percent shares of the ban to a consortium of Abu Dhabi Group and Bestway. Also, the bank merged its operations in the UK with those belonging to National Bank of Pakistan to form United National Bank Limited. United Bank owns 55% of the joint-venture and National Bank of Pakistan owns the remainder.
In June 2014, the government sold-off its remaining 19.8 percent shares in the bank for $387 million ($310m of which was in foreign exchange).
In November 2018, UBL announced that it was voluntarily shutting down its New York City branch due to it being commercially nonviable to operate.
United Bank Limited in an effort to increase its outreach in the market of Pakistan has done contract with Access Group to activate DigitalPass – POS terminals. DigitalPass is the part of Access Group and has a presence in over 200 cities and towns of the country serving the needs of different merchants. As per this contract, UBL will be provided provision of POS terminals by Access Group to relatively boost the presence of banking activities. It will also help in enhancing the bank’s outreach in terms of POS terminal based Network.
Being the largest bank in the private sector, UBL has over 1,390 branches nationwide and 18 branches outside Pakistan. It has a customer base of more than 4 million, leading the financial and banking services in the country
Muhammad Shafiq khan The Ex-president of UBL thought it prudent to initiate UBL’s online banking. Through this facility, customers are able to access their account from more than 1200 branches located in 150 cities across Pakistan. Transactions such as Cash Deposit, Cheque Encashment, Stop Payment, Account Statement, Funds Transfer, Bill Payments are done online without the need to travel to the local branch.