our manufactured
capital

We offer financial solutions in line with the needs of our customers from all walks of life with our efficiency-oriented policies, modern banking products, and services, including retail and private banking areas as well as Corporate, Commercial, Agricultural, Local Administrations, and SME Banking through our IT system infrastructure that is compatible with the requirements of the era and our widespread branch network and alternative distribution channels.

We are working to facilitate access to finance with our branches, of which 24% are rural, and 18% are in priority regions for development in our field settlement consisting of 940 branches and 27 regions. We provide banking services to reach more people with our digital banking applications that enable use regardless of location and time. We carry out 96.27% of the transactions in our bank through our non-branch channels

We continue to provide services abroad to our customers through branches in Vienna, and Cologne of our subsidiary VakıfBank International AG, which was established to carry out banking operations abroad, and our 4 branches in New York, Bahrain, Erbil, and Qatar. With the license approval we received from the Qatar Financial Center on May 10, 2020, we became the first and only Turkish Bank with a banking license in Qatar, which is progressing toward becoming an even more powerful financial center. Accordingly, our Qatar Branch has actively started its operations by obtaining the operating license from Qatar Financial Center as of February 2, 2021. We are increasing our overseas activities by standing alongside the Turkish entrepreneurs and business people operating abroad. In this context, we are planning to open a representative office in China after the pandemic.

We use our technological power to make it easier for our disabled citizens to benefit from financial products and services, and we are making arrangements on both our branch and non-branch channels.

As VakıfBank, in line with our goal of standing by all segments of society, we continue to offer solutions tailored to our customers’ requirements and enable them to make savings with the products and services we developed in this period.

We launched the product called the “Currency Protected TL Time Deposit Account,” supported by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, offered as a special new financial alternative to customers to eliminate their concerns arising from the rise in the exchange rate while utilizing their savings and the product called the “Foreign Currency Conversion Currency Protected TL Time Deposit Account” where the CBRT provides support to the depositors against exchange rate changes in case the foreign currency deposit accounts are converted into TL time deposit accounts. In addition, we have rapidly integrated relevant products into our digital banking channels making them available to all of our customers. We continue to support our customers during the pandemic with our applications that facilitate access to our bank’s deposit products.

Extensive ATM Network

Thanks to our network of 4,162 ATMs dispersed across a wide area in Turkey, we enable our customers to realize more than 70 banking transactions more quickly on a 24/7 basis, without waiting in the queue inside our branches. Approximately 17% of our ATMs are located in rural areas and 21% in priority-regions for development. Additionally, 97% of our ATMs consist of Barrier-Free Life ATMs.

We will be introducing 500 Recycle-featured new-gen ATMs to our customers in 2022. In this way, while we will ensure that all of our ATMs, the numbers of which are now reduced to 230, which are not equipped for the use of visually impaired customers, are withdrawn from the field, we will also increase the number of Recycle ATMs from 980 to 1,480 by the end of 2021. So while reducing the frequency of servicing and the probability of malfunctions, we are going to decrease the level of carbon emissions resulting from servicing and maintenance operations. Furthermore, with the rise in the number of our Recycle ATMs, we will also increase the efficiency of our ATMs and contribute to the reduction of the operational workload.

Following the practice of withdrawing money from ATMs of other banks with a QR code, which we were the first bank to implement in Turkey last year, we will begin the works to establish the same easiness of procedure for the money deposit transactions for the next year.

We also continued the Public Partner ATM operations in 2021. In this context, we have completed the development of the software, which allows the customers who prefer using the Public Partner ATM to perform transactions by directly using the menus of the customer’s own bank. Once the software becomes widely implemented on all ATMs, we will deliver our customers the experience to perform transactions using our own ATM menus not only in our own ATMs but also on 19 thousand ATMs that belong to other banks.

Banking without Barriers

We aim to remove barriers in access to banking services, and we are trying to find solutions to make life easier for disabled people by being involved in the Banking Services Working Group for Disabled Citizens of the Banks Association of Turkey (BAT).

While designing our branches’ entrances and interior designs to make them eligible for the use of our physically disabled customers, we are working to provide palpable surfaces, call buttons, emergency voice, and light guiding devices, and Braille embossed handles and disabled desks.

Our efforts for the comfort our disabled customers are not limited to our branches. However, we also try to facilitate our disabled customers’ access to our other channels’ financial services. We offer our basic contracts for our customers with disabilities in Braille Alphabet and audio format. Thus, we aim that our disabled customers can safely perform their Barrier-free banking transactions.

We make the screen and keyboard height and physical location of our ATMs suitable for wheelchair access. 41% of all of our ATMs have been customized for the use of our customers with physical disabilities. In 3,932 ATMs, we ensure that visually-impaired people, whether they are our Bank’s customers or not, can perform their banking transactions using their voice with the help of headphones. 94% of our ATMs are suitable for use by our visually-impaired customers.

By signing on to the principles of digitalization, we always see this transformation as a whole in our attempts to stand by and support all segments of society. We offer our internet and mobile banking services compatible with the screen reader programs used by our visually impaired customers. We have increased the dial-up time of the audio response system for our disabled customers, making it easier for them to connect to telephone banking. All brands and models of physical POS devices used by our Bank in the field and Cash Register POS Devices using our Bank’s application are equipped with keys with an embossed surface. When our “Voice Signature” project, which we carry out in our Call Center, is completed, we aim to provide convenience to our visually impaired customers who have difficulty dialing for our security confirmations.

In addition, we facilitate banking transactions for the hearing impaired through our “Video Service” application and provide services to VakıfBank customers whose disability status is registered with the bank through our video call center using sign language. Within this scope, we provided sign language training to our customer representatives. This way, we eliminated the obligation of the hearing-impaired to visit a branch to perform transactions not available on the VakıfBank mobile application such as increasing the daily money transfer limit and updating the account transaction type. With our Sign Language application in Video Call Center, which facilitates banking transactions for our hearing-impaired customers, we have been awarded the “Social Responsibility Special Prize” at the CX Awards where the most successful customer experience applications in Turkey are evaluated.

In addition, we offer our customers who have disability status in their Registered Information and our customers over the age of 60 the option of firstly connecting to the customer representative in the Voice Response System.