On January 30, 1948, we started our operations as Akbank by obtaining authorization to carry out all types of banking transactions with the permission given by the Council of Ministers in its decision dated 12.12.1947 and numbered 3/6710. Initially, our aim was to provide resources and support to cotton producers in Adana, as a private-equity commercial bank. We opened our first branch in Istanbul in Sirkeci on July 14, 1950. After the relocation of our Head Office to Istanbul in 1954, the number of our branches increased rapidly. We transitioned to automated systems in all banking transactions in 1963. After the IPO that took place in 1990 and the secondary public offering in 1998, we also started to operate through American Depository Receipts (ADR) on international markets.
We provide services to our customers in a wide range of activities including corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, SME banking, retail banking, payment systems, private banking, wealth management, and treasury operations. We also carry out activities in the insurance sector through our branches and act as an insurance agent on behalf of Aksigorta Co. and AgeSA Pension and Life Insurance Co.
Our subsidiaries include Akbank AG, AKLease, Ak Investment, Ak Asset Management and AkÖde Through our subsidiaries, we offer innovative product solutions for various financial needs of our customers. In addition, Akbank has noteworthy products and services that stand out in the national and international banking sector, such as Axess, Wings, and Private Banking.
With our wide service network and technological infrastructure, our bank provides services to more than 13.1 million net active customers through our headquarters in Istanbul, our Data and Life Centre, our 19 Regional Directorates in Türkiye, 705 branches, and 12 thousand 864 employees. Besides face-to-face services in our branches, we add value to our customers by investing in digital transformation and via Akbank Internet, Akbank Mobile, our Call Centre, 5,854 ATMs, and 771,206 POS terminals (including virtual POS). Our branch in Malta and our subsidiary Akbank AG in Germany also contribute to our international operations.
In 2020, within the scope of our sustainability strategy, we identified four main focus areas: Sustainable Finance, People & Community, Ecosystem Management, and Climate Change. In 2023, we fulfilled our commitment to provide TL 200 billion of sustainable loan financing to our country by 2030, which was a commitment that we made at the beginning of 2021. By increasing our credit support to our economy to TL 757 billion in 2023, we achieved our 2030 target this year, which placed us in a strong position in our sector. In 2023, the credit support we provided to our economy was TL 962 billion in cash. We increased it to TL 1 trillion 201 billion. Our total deposits have reached TL 1 trillion 293 billion and our assets reached TL 1 trillion 905 billion. With our strong consolidated capital adequacy ratio of 21%, we continued to support the growth and development of the real sector. This year, our Bank made a consolidated net profit of TL 66 billion 496 million, after TL 20 billion 596 million tax provisions.
We work with a long-term perspective and determination to leave a more liveable world to future generations. With our Environmental and Social Risk Framework, which we have developed to manage our environmental and social risk assessment processes, we integrate sustainability into our operations and banking processes.
Through our corporate culture that is based on the principles of diversity and inclusion, we support the participation of people with disabilities in work life; gender equality and equal opportunities; women’s empowerment and volunteering activities, and equal opportunities in education. As a signatory of The Valuable 500 initiative, we are proud to be the first bank and organization from Türkiye to join the global initiative in this field. With the products and services we offer in the field of financial inclusion, we aim to strengthen our society financially and to ensure the participation of all our stakeholders, including disadvantaged groups, in the economy. At the same time, as a founding member of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Financial Health and Inclusion Commitment, we contribute to the work carried out in this area.
“With Akbank LAB”, we reinforce our innovative banking culture by investing in pioneering projects and start-ups in the banking sector. In order to respond quickly to the changing needs of our customers and adapt to technological developments, we adopt a banking culture that is open to change and innovation. To maintain our leading position in the digital transformation of the banking sector in Türkiye, we are constantly improving our “Akbank Mobile” application.
In 2021, we added a new one to our community investments and established the Akbank Youth Academy. In this context, we act based on the principle of “starting the transformation together with the youth” and offer training in various fields to our young people in order to help them gain the necessary competencies for the future.
Bloomberg’s Gender Equality Index is a list created to measure and report on the gender equality data of international companies. As of 2023, 484 companies are included in the index, which contains 70 questions on topics such as gender statistics, gender equality policy, and pay equality.
As Akbank, we are proud to have been a part of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index for 3 years as a bank that is committed to gender equality and works undertaken in this field.
We review our activities and operational processes within the scope of the fight against climate change and we implement sustainable solutions that include efficiency, savings, and reduction efforts with the aim to reduce our environmental footprint. We report to national and international sustainability indices, have our efforts evaluated by third-party evaluators, and identify areas for improvement. In addition to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from our operations, we also strive to become a “net-zero bank” by 2050 by eliminating the impact of our loan portfolio on climate change. In this context, we analyse the qualitative effects of risks and opportunities that could arise from climate change, on our customers’ activities, and their quantitative effects on the loan portfolio, to determine which vulnerabilities may be closely connected to our loan portfolio.
We take into account the framework of the “Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures” (TCFD) to understand the opportunities and risks connected to the vulnerabilities.
With our net-zero carbon roadmap and efforts, we aim to reduce our bank’s impact on climate change and create a positive effect within the scope of management of risks in the field of climate change. In our net-zero preliminary assessment studies that we carry out for our customers in particular sectors, we enable our customers to identify sectoral opportunities at an early stage while reducing the possibility of being affected by potential transition risks, such as regulatory changes.