We were founded in Adana on January 30, 1948, as a privately-owned commercial bank, within the framework of the consent granted by the Council of Ministers' decision dated 12.12.1947 and numbered 3/6710, to carry out all kinds of banking transactions and to perform any kind of economic, financial and commercial initiatives and activities that are not prohibited by the Laws of the Republic of Türkiye, for the purpose of providing resources and support to the cotton producers in Adana. We opened our first Istanbul branch in Sirkeci on 14 July 1950. After our Headquarters 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, consumer 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 of Akbank AG, Ak Lease, Ak Investment, Ak Asset Management, and Ak Öde. We possess 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 the Akbank identity.
We provide services to our over 10,8 million active customers through our extensive service network and technological infrastructure with our Headquarters in Istanbul, Data and Life Center, 19 Regional Directorates in Türkiye, 711 branches, and more than 12 thousand employees. Apart from the one-to-one service we provide at our branches, we continue to create value through Akbank Internet, Akbank Mobile, Call Center, approximately 5900 ATMs, and 734 thousand POS terminals (including virtual POS) for our customers with the investments we make in digital transformation. In addition to the foregoing, we have brought an international dimension to our operations through our subsidiary Akbank AG in Germany and our branch in Malta by drawing strength from our highly reputable identity in Türkiye.
In 2022, we increased the loan support we provide to our economy to the level of a total of 757 billion TL, 616 billion TL of which is in cash. Our total deposits reached 722 billion TL and our assets reached 1 trillion 147 billion TL. With our strong consolidated capital adequacy ratio reaching 23.2%, we have one of the strongest capital structures in our sector. With the strength we take from this structure, we continued to contribute to the development of our real sector in line 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 74 years. Within the scope of our sustainability strategy in 2020, we have identified four focus areas: sustainable finance, people & community, ecosystems management, and climate change.
We work with a long-term perspective and determination to leave a more inhabitable world to future generations. At the beginning of 2021, we committed to providing 200 billion TL of sustainable loan financing to our country by 2030. In proportion to this loan volume, we aim to increase the sustainability-related financing we will provide also until 2030. In addition, we are committed to increasing the balance of mutual funds, which are included in the category of sustainable investment, to 15 billion TL by 2030 as well. With the said commitments of ours, we became the first deposit bank in Türkiye to set long-term targets in the field of sustainability.
We endeavour to integrate sustainability into all our operations and banking processes. In this direction, we manage our environmental and social risk assessment processes that we actively carry out, with our Environmental and Social Risk Framework, which we developed and updated in 2022. While offering innovative financing products that support the low-carbon transformation of our companies and all our customers, we take place among the leading institutions of our country and region with our sustainability-related borrowing transactions. In 2021, as a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Banking of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative, we also strengthened the international dimension of our endeavours in this field.
We prioritize our work in line with our sustainability strategy, with our corporate culture based on diversity and inclusion principles. We support the participation of disabled people in working life, gender and equality of opportunity, women's empowerment, and equality of opportunity in education through our volunteering activities. As a signatory to The Valuable 500, which was established as a global initiative in 2021, we became the first bank and institution from Türkiye that joined the initiative.
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 Commitment to Financial Health & Inclusion of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative.
With the “Akbank LAB” that we established in 2016 based on our innovative banking culture, we invest in spearheading projects and start-ups in the banking sector in Türkiye and abroad.
In order to respond to the changing needs of our customers and to adapt to the developments that technology brings along to our lives, we adopt a banking culture open to innovation and change. We are constantly improving our “Akbank Mobile” application so that our customers can easily meet their financial needs, and we safeguard our leading position in the digital transformation journey of the banking sector in Türkiye. We became the first bank in our country to implement the "Digital First" program to provide new conveniences to our customers in the use of credit cards during the COVID-19 pandemic, the period when distance services gained importance.
By adding a new one to our social investments in 2021, we established Akbank Youth Academy. As part of the Youth Academy, we provide training in different fields to our young people, who constitute an important part of our society, to gain the competencies of the future. We have reached 40 thousand students, exceeding the target of reaching 15 thousand students for the first year of the Academy.
In line with our work based on gender equality, we are included in the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI), one of the most comprehensive worldwide surveys to measure the performance of companies that have committed to gender equality since 2021. While ranking among the top 5 banks, we were chosen as the best of the emerging markets, in the “Gender Balance Index” research, which is accepted as an important reference point at the international level by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) established to encourage the best policies and practices in global financial markets.
We review our activities and operational processes within the scope of the fight against climate change and implement sustainable solutions that include efficiency, savings, and reduction works that will enable us to reduce our environmental footprint. We report to national and international sustainability indices and determine our development areas by ensuring that our sustainability efforts are rated by third-party evaluating institutions. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from our operations, becoming a "net zero bank" by zeroing the impact of our loan portfolio on climate change by 2050 is also among our targets to combat the climate crisis. Accordingly, we announced our support to the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in 2021.