The Expert and Consultant Bank of Türkiye's Economy
Click here to see a transcript of Mr. Suat İnce's interview published in the Economist Magazine. Maintaining its multifaceted contribution to Türkiye's development and sustainable growth in its 69th year of operation, TSKB also diversifies the added value which it provides with its consultancy services, which cover an ever-widening area of application.
Having achieved many firsts and developments in Türkiye's economy to date, TSKB has maintained its privileged position in the financial sector with its sustainable banking model that has included environmental and social development for the last 20 years. Distinguished by its human resources profile and the notion of expert banking, the bank has its finger on the pulse of development with its analysts, engineers and economists, and establishes long-term collaborations with the producing sector. The General Manager of TSKB Mr. Suat İnce said, “The synergy we have created with our global fund providers allows us to be the first bank to bring innovative practices to Türkiye in many areas”, adding that all of these strengths provide new possibilities for the bank and that one of the important areas which the bank was focussed on as part of its ‘Look to the Future Program’, which it has been conducting for three years, was to see in which areas we were strong.
He continued with the following: “As a result of this work, we decided to show ourselves more in the field of consulting, in addition to the corporate and investment banking fields.We have conducted serious work, even recently structuring our consultancy services on an organizational basis. We have very strong teams that are distinguished in economic, sectoral and technical subjects. We have brought all of these teams together under a single directorate. We want to expand our consultancy services even further with the aim of contributing to our country's economy, not only with our loan facilities but also with our minds, experience and expertise. With our consulting services, whose field of practice has been expanding with each passing day, our dream is that each institution which will take a stake in Türkiye's future, first consults TSKB… We carried out our new structuring in this direction and we are moving forward with rapid strides.”
TSKB is ready for the future
Mr. İnce explained the other work being carried out within the scope of the ‘Look to the Future’ Program initiated by TSKB in 2016: “We focus on the question of ‘How should we prepare for the next 10-20 years?’ by considering many different aspects such as the way we do business with the program, our perception, our image and our language of communication. We looked at many areas such as organizational structure, customer management, fund supply and management, loan processes, internal customer satisfaction and performance management. We were not content with our own minds - we have received consultancy services from some distinguished companies. I am also delighted to note that we have achieved very good results in a short space of time. We have developed special programs to make our young colleagues think like a CEO. We have taken steps in order to incorporate the entrepreneurial perspective and innovation into our corporate culture. We have renewed the interior design of our building and designed a more energetic working environment.”
Mr. İnce stated that TSKB wanted to develop its position in the fields of corporate banking, investment banking and consultancy, and move its position forward in 2019, as in previous years. He also mentioned the important resource agreements signed last year: In order to transfer these resources to our economy in the best way, we aim to redouble our efforts to support the investments undertaken by exporters providing foreign exchange currency inflows to our country, in addition to the sustainability themes such as women's employment, renewable energy, energy and resource efficiency.
Environmental investments maintain their priority
Setting itself apart with its sustainability portfolio of 73%, TSKB has been prioritizing investments that protect the environment, produce responsibly and reduce the carbon footprint of our country for the last 20 years. Mr. Suat İnce pointed out that this priority was gaining ever more importance: “On the other hand, we believe that there is much that the financial sector can do to ensure inclusive development. We have recently started to support the investments of companies which support women's participation in the workforce and which create a women-friendly working climate with the funds which we have provided from the French Development Agency and the World Bank,. We identify these companies with our special measurement models and we add strength to those which increase women's employment”, he said.
Mr. İnce provided some information about the Bank's financial performance: “In spite of the intensive agenda at home and abroad, we successfully completed 2018 thanks to our policies that we established with a proactive approach. We continued to generate strong financial results in line with our expectations in 2019. Protecting asset quality, keeping capital strong and maintaining high liquidity stand out as the most important issues which we focus on. In the first quarter of this year, the Bank's assets amounted to TL 41.6 billion and shareholders' equity amounted to TL 5.3 billion. We achieved a return on equity of 14.8% with a three-month net profit of TL 185 million. We maintained our NPL (non-performing loans) ratio at 2.1%.
Banking is poised to be a driving force of the economy towards the 2023 goals
Mr. İnce said that the importance of the support provided by the banking sector to the economy had increased during the rebalancing process and that the restructuring process of the loans of the companies affected by financial volatility will be a priority for 2019. He expressed his belief that with the strong and healthy structure of the sector, while successfully renewing international loan payments, the sector would continue to operate in a manner where it was capable of responding to a potential recovery in loan demand, adding: “The banking sector is the driving force of the strategic vision and goals project, which was created for the year of 2023 - the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye. I would say that our sector has reached an important point with its legal, institutional and technical infrastructure and qualified manpower. I believe our banks will continue to fulfil their duty by directing their capital resources to investment and employment. If we consider TSKB in particular, we are a bank which was established with the mission of supporting the country's development. In this process, our main goal is to increase the added value which we provide for the development of our country's economy through our principles of sustainable and inclusive growth, which have become our business model, our financing resources and consultancy services.”
