By: Munaeem — working in SWIFT, Banking Sector, Pakistan | Blogging at munaeem.de
It’s funny how routines grow roots. You tap a few keys. You scan a SWIFT message. You glance at the trade queue.
Then you blink—and it’s been 10 years.
I’m now less than a year away from retirement. February 2026. The date is marked in my mind, like the blinking cursor on my screen that’s always waiting for the next instruction. Only this time, the instruction is: stop.
But I’m not sure how to.
The Rhythm of a Lifetime
I work in the SWIFT Department of a bank in Pakistan. Not the most glamorous part of banking, but one of the most sensitive. Our job is to monitor and manage cross-border payments and trade messages—ensuring that every dollar, euro, or yuan sent in or out tells the truth. That it’s legitimate. That it’s compliant. That it won’t come back to haunt us.
It’s a quiet kind of power. You’re not the face of the bank. You’re the firewall. The logic-checker. The guy who sees the story behind the transaction.
Some days, it’s just routine. Other days, you catch something off. A typo in a sender’s code. A mismatch in trade details. A gut feeling that saves a client from a costly delay—or worse.
What Do You Do With the Silence?
The strangest thing is not leaving the bank. It’s leaving the version of myself that only exists inside this system.
Here, I am part of the circuit. I am trusted. I know what to look for. I train the younger team. I understand the pulse of global transactions in a way you only get from years of repetition.
What will replace that when it’s gone? A blog post? A cup of chai on the terrace?
It’s not that I fear being irrelevant. It’s that I fear being… unneeded.
The Small Things That Still Matter
There are days I wish I could retire tomorrow. And there are days I walk through the department with a strange tenderness. The old SWIFT terminals. The familiar acronyms. The colleague who still calls me “Bhai” when he forgets my name.
When I joined, Pakistan’s trade landscape was simpler. Smaller. Less digital. Now, the flow of international payments has become faster, stricter, and infinitely more watched. In a way, we’ve gone from postmen to gatekeepers.
I’m proud of that.
But I also wonder—what wisdom have we failed to pass on? What has this constant surveillance of capital cost us in terms of trust?
Preparing to Unplug
Retirement isn’t just about filing paperwork and taking your pension. It’s psychological offboarding. I’ve started writing more—on Medium, and on my blog munaeem.de—trying to translate decades of banking, fatherhood, identity, and quiet reflection into stories that might resonate with someone else.
Maybe someone younger in the SWIFT room today.
Or maybe just someone who, like me, is standing at the edge of their next beginning… and wondering what comes after the last message is sent.
I’ve spent decades making sure other people’s money gets to where it’s supposed to go.
Now, it’s my turn.
And I’m still figuring out where that is.