Akbank T.A.Ş. was established in Adana on January 30, 1948 as a privately-owned commercial bank to provide resources and support to the local cotton producers, with the purpose of carrying out all kinds of banking transactions and performing any kind of economic, financial and commercial attempts and activities that are not prohibited by the Laws of the Republic of Turkey, in accordance with the permission granted by the Council of Ministers' decision no. 3/6710 dated 12.12.1947. We opened our first Istanbul branch on July 14, 1950 in Sirkeci. After our Head Office was relocated to Istanbul in 1954, we rapidly increased the number of our branches, and we automated all banking transactions in 1963.
With our public offering in 1990 and our secondary public offering in 1998, we started to trade in international markets as an American Depository Receipt (ADR).
We continue to serve our customers in the fields of corporate and investment banking, commercial banking, SME banking, retail banking, payment systems, private banking, investment services and treasury transactions. In addition to our standard banking services, we also provide services in the insurance sector through our branches. We provide insurance agency services on behalf of Aksigorta A.Ş. and AgeSA Hayat ve Emeklilik A.Ş.
We are able to develop innovative product solutions for our customers' different financial needs via our affiliates Akbank AG, AkLease, Ak Investment, Ak Asset Management and AkÖde. We own products and services that make a difference in the national and international banking sector, such as Axess, Wings and Private Banking, which are associated with Akbank’s identity.
We serve over 19 million customers through our extensive service network and technological infrastructure, with our Head Office in Istanbul, our Data and Life Center, and 19 Regional Directorates, 711 branches and over 12 thousand employees in Turkey. Apart from one-on-one services we provide at our branches, we continue to create value for our customers through our investments in digital transformation, via Akbank Internet, Akbank Mobile, Call Center, approximately 5300 ATMs and 680 thousand POS terminals (including virtual POS). Moreover, we have added an international dimension to our operations through our affiliate Akbank AG in Germany and our branch in Malta, by drawing strength from our highly reputable identity in Turkey.
In 2021, the loan support we provided to the economy increased to a total of TL 485 billion, with TL 397 billion in cash loans. Our total deposits reached TRY 454 billion and our assets to TRY 763 billion. With our strong consolidated capital adequacy ratio reaching 21.1%, we have one of the strongest capital structures in our industry. With the strength we derive from this structure, we continued to contribute to the development of our real sector with the loans we offer to our companies.
As Akbank, we have been a part of many initiatives that contribute to the social development of our country, by providing financing without compromising our ethical, social and environmental values for 73 years. In 2020, as part of our sustainability strategy, we have identified four main focus areas: sustainable finance, people and communities, ecosystem management and climate change.
We became the first deposit bank in Turkey to set long-term goals in the field of sustainability. We know that the fight against climate change, the impact of which we will increasingly feel all over the world, can only be successful with a long-term perspective, strategies based on data and science, and inter-institutional cooperation.
With this awareness and responsibility, we are also committed to providing our country with sustainable loan financing of TRY 200 billion by 2030. In parallel to this loan volume, we aim also aim to increase the sustainability-linked funding secured by the bank. In addition, we are committed to increasing the volume of our sustainable investment products to TRY 15 billion by 2030.
In line with the responsibility we assumed in Turkey's transition to a sustainable economy, we focused on sustainable finance instruments. In this respect, in addition to the environmental and social impact assessment system and policy compliance processes, granting of loans to renewable energy projects, green bond practices and sustainable loan agreement practices, which we actively carry out, we included sustainable finance practices such as the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative's Principles for Responsible Banking, sustainable themed syndicated loans, blue finance product package, sustainable subordinated bond issuance, repo transactions with sustainability criteria, both in our way of doing business and in our services in 2021.
In line with our sustainability strategy, we prioritize our work to foster our corporate culture based on diversity and inclusion principles. We aim to strengthen our society financially with the products and services we provide in the field of financial inclusion and to ensure the participation of all our stakeholders, including disadvantaged groups, in the economy. In 2021, we became a founding member of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative's Financial Health and Inclusion Commitment.
We support efforts for disability inclusion in working life, gender equality, volunteering, women's empowerment, and equal opportunities in education with our volunteering activities. As a signatory of The Valuable 500, which was established as a global initiative in 2021, we became the first bank and institution from Turkey to join the initiative.
With “Akbank LAB”, which we established in 2016 based on our innovative banking culture, we invest in pioneering projects in the domestic and international banking sector. We continue to undertake new projects with Akbank LAB, which aims to improve the customer experience and facilitate the operations of business units.
We adopt a banking culture that is open to innovation and change in order to respond to the changing needs of our customers and to adapt to the developments brought by technology to our lives. As part of our “Next Generation Akbank” program, we are constantly improving our redesigned “Akbank Mobile” application so that our customers can easily meet their financial needs, and we maintain our leading position in the digital transformation journey of the banking sector in Turkey. We became the first bank in our country to implement the "Digital First" program in order to provide convenience to our customers for credit cards during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when remote services gained prominence.
We established Akbank Youth Academy, a new and exciting addition to our social investments. Within the scope of the Academy, we provide training in different fields to young people, who represent an important part of our society in order to provide them with the competencies of the future. We have reached 40 thousand students, exceeding the target of 15 thousand students anticipated for the first year of the Academy.
As Akbank, we develop products and services that meet the expectations of all our stakeholders with our technological infrastructure and understanding of financial inclusion in the banking sector. We continue to create special financing support for different groups such as SMEs, women entrepreneurs and start-ups.
In line with our work on gender equality, we were listed in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index (GEI) in 2021, one of the most comprehensive surveys conducted worldwide to measure the performance of companies committed to gender equality. We were among the top 5 banks in the “Gender Balance Index” of Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a research project that is internationally accepted as an important reference point. This project was established to encourage the best policies and practices in the global financial markets, and also have been selected as the best in emerging markets.
We review our activities and operational processes within the scope of the fight against climate change, and implement sustainable solutions which include efficiency, savings and mitigation efforts that will enable us to reduce our environmental footprint. We report to national and international sustainability indices, and we determine our areas of development by ensuring that our sustainability efforts are rated by third-parties. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions caused by our operations, reducing the impact of our loan portfolio on climate change by 2030 is also among our goals to fight the climate crisis. Accordingly, we announced our support to the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) this year.