As the sector’s leading bank, we continue to develop our business model and infrastructure to provide the real sector and individuals with easy and effective access to banking services, as part of our aim to be “everyone’s bank”. We are also concentrating these activities on developing the savings base, so as to ensure the use of the economy’s scarce resources more efficiently.
Our Bank’s total assets amounted to TL 358 billion at the end of 2016, marking an increase of 18% YoY, with most of the growth in credit. Cash loans amounted to TL 233 billion, an increase of TL 46 billion, or 25% in YoY terms. Within the framework of our credit policy that is more focused on the real sector, approximately 75% of our cash loans comprise of corporate loans. In our corporate loans, we continue to increase the support we extend for all sectors with our diversified products in accordance with financing needs and project financing by giving the greatest priority to the agricultural sector. We continue to expand our non-cash loans as well as our cash loans. We maintain our position as the leader of the banking sector in terms of cash, non-cash and total loans.
We continue our efforts to address the structural problems of the agricultural sector by providing financial support. We also continue our work to help the agricultural sector access finance and to increase the added value of the sector by becoming more industrialized. Our Bank increased the volume of loans that it disbursed to the agricultural sector by 25% in 2016.
Within the framework of entrepreneurial banking, we have provided necessary support to our small and medium sized customers by providing necessary financing at reasonable costs and maturities through the joint work we have conducted with institutions such as KOSGEB and the Credit Guarantee Fund (KGF), as well as through our own solutions.
There has also been an acceleration in individual lending, especially in housing loans. We have achieved a considerable increase also in these loans with the important improvements we have achieved both in terms of interest rates and conditions, as well as lifetime banking practices designed for young people, employees and pensioners. Our Bank alone was responsible for half of the sector’s entire growth in housing loans in 2016, with a 50% increase. At the same time, we are developing our payment systems infrastructure and continued to be the leader in the Bank card sector in 2016 in terms of market share.
While we have more than doubled the volume of our loans in the last 4 years, we also continue to have a positive course on credit quality with our credit processes and modules that we designed with our own resources and that we have continuously improved. Our non-performing loan ratio remains at just half of the sector average, at 1.8%. Given that we have not carried out any sales of our non-performing loans, it is safe to say we are in a much more positive position in this respect than the sector.
As our balance sheet is the most important source of financing, we continue to improve the widespread structure of deposits and diversify our sources. In this context, we renewed our USD 1.1 billion syndication loan in 2016 and issued a new USD 500 million, 5 year maturity Eurobond. We continued to provide loans from international organizations and banks. We will also continue to provide resources from abroad at favorable conditions and continue to support the real sector through the loans channel going forward.
1,814OUR BANK BOASTS 1,814 BRANCHES, THE MOST WIDESPREAD BRANCH NETWORK IN THE COUNTRY.
Our Bank boasts 1,814 branches, the most widespread branch network in the country. We attach importance to the development of our branches in terms of efficiency as well as our efforts to increase the quality of the service we provide in the branches. The volume of deposits and loans per branch and per member of staff has increased considerably, while the number of employees per branch has been reduced thanks to the improvements carried out in our infrastructure and processes.
We are currently developing plans to work with boutique branches with will be set up with fewer employees. To this end, we have focused on developing digital banking to use non-branch channels more effectively. We have been increasing the number and effectiveness of ATMs and developing the internet and mobile banking transaction sets. In addition to our branch network, we also have the most extensive ATM network in our country. In 2016, we increased our number of internet and mobile banking customers by more than 50% and 100% respectively, while offering our customers the “Ziraat Tablet” application.
We will continue to have one of the lowest cost/income ratios of any bank in the industry with the improvements made to the branches and non-branch channels. We will continue to develop ourselves further by placing efficiency at the focal point of our activities.
We have service units in 99 locations in 19 countries abroad. In 2016, we opened a third branch in Georgia, where we aim to continue our activities with a bank that is currently in the process of being established. We continued to develop our international service network by opening a branch in Bahrain. We also added the “Ziraat REIT” to the range of financial services that we provide with our domestic subsidiaries.
Ziraat Bank will continue to increase its contribution to the development and growth of our country while continuing to develop itself and grow steadily with an approach based on efficiency.
I would like to extend my thanks to all of our stakeholders for their strong and unwavering contribution to our sustainable growth story.
Hüseyin AYDIN
Member of the Board and CEO
