Akbank Wealth Management, market leader in “investment diversity” and “technology in investment” also aims to be leader in social investment products, offered to their customers. By early November, reached a size of 1.6 billion TL in this area, Akbank issued first domestic Social Bond for individuals in September 2021.
Being the first Turkish bank to sign the United Nations Global Compact, Akbank supports the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, which set out the priority global problems to be solved by 2030. One of the Bank's priorities in this context is to enable their individual customers to invest in the fields of Environmental, Social and Governance projects. For this purpose, Akbank Wealth Management offers various investment options such as Mutual Funds, Bills/Bonds, or Stocks to their investors with different risk expectations and assets.
Akbank Private Banking and Wealth Management Executive Vice President Dr. Alp Keler, “In today’s era, globally it is critical to make sustainable investments in order to protect the resources of future generations and to achieve better living conditions. In Turkey, as Akbank Wealth Management, we pioneered directing of our individual customers' investments to projects in this fields by offering different types of investment products in 2021."
Keler stated that the investors in Turkey showed much more interest in social and environmental investments than they expected and explained these investments as follows: “We aim to start a new investment trend in Turkey. With social and environmental bonds, we will enable our customers to contribute to such projects through their investments, with fixed interest and maturity just like usual bonds. We made a very quick start in this regard in September. We issued the first Domestic Social Bonds of 340 Million TL, with high individual investors’ demand. The proceed applied to finance two different projects, serving 3th UN Sustainable Development Goal, "good health and well-being".
Keler said, “517 million TL public offering of a biotechnology company Anatolia Geneworks’s shares, which was held on 14-15 October, a total of 113,032 investors demanded through the consortium formed under the leadership of Ak Investment. In the upcoming period, we will continue to offer our customers many products with different themes that contribute to the development of our country, especially in the field of health, and aim to increase the welfare of individuals.
Ak Asset Management Health Sector Foreign Equity Fund, which includes the shares of the world's leading companies in vaccine, pharmaceutical, genetics and health electronics sectors and Ak Asset Management Alternative Energy Foreign Equity Fund, which invests in important global company shares in solar, wind, hydrogen and battery technologies, exceeded 1 billion TL with 30 thousand customers. For these funds, we have already reached our end-year target of 1 billion TL. With an innovative and sustainable perspective, we continue to meet future-themed, world-class investment products with Turkish investors.
As a result; thanks to the high interest of our investment customers in all these products, we expect to reach a significant sustainable investment volume of 2 billion TL in its first year and can easily reach our target of 15 billion TL for 2030.