Dear Stakeholders
In this Halkbank Integrated Annual Report published for the first time this year, we disclose our financial and non-financial performance in the context of the Integrated Reporting Framework (<IR Framework>) of the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF). We present information to our stakeholder on the value we create with our business operations with the 6 capitals that we identified.
We endeavored to adapt our Bank to all developments and changes in order to ensure the continuity of our contribution to our stakeholders in 2020. We managed to overcome all this negative atmosphere with our understanding of responsible banking and our agile operational structure that we quickly reviewed. We considered not only today but also the future and in addition to COVID-19, included the topics of Value Creation for the Local Economy, Climate Change, Digitalization and Cyber Security among our focus points.
We never stopped supporting SMEs, tradesmen and artisans who suffered the most from the lockdowns implemented during the pandemic; we maintained our focus on them and offered solutions specific to various sectors with our SME Support Packages. We provided support to our stakeholders in the real sector affected by the epidemic with our digital products, without having to come to our branches. We observed our growth not only on paper but also in the hearts of our customers. In 2020, we increased the number of our customers with 2.5 million new customers. In this period, we also made a strong leap in the field of commercial cards and reached more than 1 million commercial card customers and became the bank with the second highest number of commercial cards. We achieved another strong growth in new customers and gained 2.5 million new customers in 2020. We are not content with all these achievements and aim to increase the share of SME loans in commercial loans from 52.7% to 60% in 2021.
We are doing our best to fulfill our responsibilities to our country based on the requirements of our sector and our mission. In this context, we exemplarily increased our banking performance despite the difficult times. We ranked up to third place in the sector in the critically important field of asset size that we monitor closely and to second place in the size of loans and deposits. At the same time, while providing cash support of over 322 billion TL to our people, we once again proved that our 850 thousand business and individual customers can trust us by postponing their 40.1 billion TL loan payments.
The changes in daily lives and modes of work during the pandemic, when technological developments also accelerated rapidly, once again proved the importance of our investments in digitalization. We consider our digitalization efforts as a process of cultural change and taking firm steps along our Digital Transformation journey. Despite the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to increase the value we create by providing the best, fastest and most advanced products and services to our customers.
The “Social Support Service”, which we established to provide health counseling and psycho-social support services to all our employees, especially those who contracted COVID-19 or a family member who caught it, continues to work effectively. In addition, we carry out social responsibility projects in many areas, from increasing awareness of organ donation to protecting stray animals.
We will continue to give priority to our people, employees and nature, and to always stand by our stakeholders, with our understanding of work embodied by the motto “We are the People first, then a Bank”.
Best regards,
Osman ARSLAN
