The fourth Sustainability Report of TSKB has been prepared by its employees

TSKB has presented its sustainability performance for the period 2013-2014, with the Sustainability Report, which it had prepared in accordance with the GRI-G4 principles, to its stakeholders. The new report of TSKB, which is the first organisation in the Turkish finance sector to publish a Sustainability Report, was prepared by the Sustainability Committee of the bank.

TSKB, which believes that transparency is one of the most important criteria of sustainability, has published its fourth Sustainability Report. The report, which contained the sustainability performance of TSKB in the period 2013-2014, was prepared in accordance with the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) G4 principles, and on this occasion was at the “comprehensive” level. TSKB has moved to a new practice in its latest report, and all of the content of the report was created by employees of the bank who were working on the TSKB Sustainability Committee.

10 percent of the employees of TSKB, which has been putting its name to systematic work in the field of sustainability since 2005, are participating in work groups on sustainability. These teams, who are aiming to integrate sustainability on the whole business model of the bank, are tied to an upper committee, which is comprised of two members of the board of directors and two executive vice president.

Setting off from the principle that exhaustible resources need to be used with care in order to ensure a sustainable future, TSKB has only shared this report – as with its previous reports – on its website and in the digital environment, by taking into consideration the matters of paper, paint and distribution, and without printing it.

The report includes a multi-dimensional examination of the approach to sustainability, which TSKB has transformed into a business model, and there are practices in numerous fields, which are shown as examples, from the financing of sustainable investment projects to corporate management and from the investment made in human resources to the reduction of the environmental impacts within the bank. More than 50 percent of the lending portfolio of TSKB is comprised of sustainable investment projects. The long-term cooperation entered into with international financial organisations and the accumulation of knowledge and experience of TSKB in the field of sustainability play a big role in the creation of this portfolio. With all of these investments, financing is being provided to more than 100 clean energy projects, with an installed capacity of 3.900 MW, which is the equivalent of approximately 14 percent of the renewable energy capacity of Turkey. This results in a reduction of 7.2 million tonnes in the annual carbon-dioxide emissions of Turkey. Further, TSKB has been measuring the environmental and social risk of all of the investment projects it has examined since 2005, also reducing all of the environmental effects arising from its own activities.

TSKB, which believes in the importance of sharing experiences for the purposes of sustainable transformation, prioritises the transfer of its knowledge and experience on the matter of sustainability to the different sections of society, also as a part of its social responsibility projects. cevreciyiz.com, the most comprehensive sustainability portal of Turkey, the Sustainability Workshops, which is the first literacy programme directed at universities, and the carbon-neutral organisations stand out as the activities of TSKB which increase awareness on the subject of sustainability.

Çiğdem İçel: “We have been chasing both innovation and sustainability, while the world has been changing at pace”

Çiğdem İçel, Executive Vice President at TSKB, who made a statement on the TSKB Sustainability Report, referred to the sustainability milestones of TSKB, and said, “Our ability to adapt very quickly to the spirit of the time is what lies behind the difference created by our bank in the field of sustainability. We have been chasing both innovation and sustainability, while the world has been changing at pace. Our sustainability journey, which we began with renewable energy, has reached a wide range from energy and resource efficiency to sustainable tourism. We have not restricted sustainability to just the projects we offer funds to; we have also transferred it to our own work processes. We have reduced our carbon footprint by 40 percent in the last five years and have moved to zero carbon banking. Our practices in this field have been deemed worthy of numerous awards in both the national and international arena. I believe that the fact that all of our employees have internalised sustainability with great motivation is what lies behind our success. The fact that our latest Sustainability Report was prepared by our employees confirms this once again.”

Çiğdem İçel continued as follows: “Today, topics such as climate change, the decrease in natural resources and equitable sharing give rise to justified concerns in the minds of many of us. The route to freeing ourselves from these concerns does not go through ignoring them, but through determining the problem and presenting sustainable solutions. I believe that the banking sector, which has the power to transform every sector with its financing services, has a great responsibility in this respect.”

Please visit the following address to access the whole report online:

http://www.tskb.com.tr/i/assets/document/pdf/tskb_surdurulebilirlik-raporu-2013-2014.pdf

Please click on the below link to watch the video of the summary of the report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL180Y3xjTI&feature=youtu.be