In 2020, Ziraat Bank realized a number of investments covering new projects and ideas aimed at achieving the targets it has set in line with its strategies

ZIRAAT BANK PRESSES AHEAD IN ITS CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY WITH THE SAME COMMITMENT IT HAS DEMONSTRATED FOR 157 YEARS.

In 2020, Ziraat Bank realized a number of investments covering new projects and ideas aimed at achieving the targets it has set in line with its strategies.

With a commitment to generating value for its customers and our country, Ziraat Bank has stood by its customers, offering the right solutions at the right time to meet the requirements of the real sector and households throughout the year, and implemented numerous innovations together with its domestic and international subsidiaries.

OUR STRATEGIES

A Customer-oriented, Robust Balance Sheet

While Ziraat Bank makes its balance sheet increasingly customer-oriented, it proactively manages loan quality through effective loan processes and prioritizes the effective use of resources and cost control. Planning its interactions with its customers in line with customer expectations and habits, the Bank constantly works to improve its customer-oriented business model.

The Bank continued to develop the right solutions by working to understand the financial needs of its customers and offering products and services that make life easier.

Cash loans registered 34% growth in 2020, bringing the share of loans in the Bank’s balance sheet to 64%. While the necessary resources were largely met through customer deposits, both domestic and international non-deposit resources were also used effectively.

In April 2020, Ziraat Bank secured a USD 1.1 billion syndication loan with a 367-day maturity, participated in by 38 banks from 22 countries. This loan was the Bank’s eighth consecutive syndicated borrowing transaction from international markets to finance foreign trade.

The Bank’s USD 7 billion GMTN (Global Medium Term Notes) program was updated in March 2020, and the Bank realized a bond issuance through private placement of USD 200 million with a 5-year maturity in international markets in August 2020.

The Bank has also provided alternative resources such as bilateral loans and post-financing from correspondent banks, which totaled USD 1.9 billion as of the end of 2020. The total resources provided from International Financial Institutions reached USD 1.7 billion.

Ziraat Bank has maintained its contribution to the real sector and our country’s savings balance with the funds it has supplied.

Banking for All

Ziraat Bank handles its products and services with the principle of financial inclusion, offering them to all segments of society with high quality.

Ziraat Bank focused on effectively meeting the financial requirements of the household and the real sector in 2020. With the aim of minimizing the potential damage wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic on economic life, production and employment, the Bank offered various loan packages for individuals and the real sector in 2020.

Ziraat Bank launched the Individual Basic Requirements Support Loan for its retail customers within the framework of the “Economic Stability Shield Package”. In this context, loans of up to TL 10,000 were provided with 36-month payment terms and a 6-month grace period.

Ziraat Bank offered its customers Second Hand Vehicle Support, Social Life Support and Vacation Support loan packages under favorable conditions to support the transition to normalization and to stimulate social life.

The Bank has also implemented the Continuing Business Loan Support and Cheque Payment Support packages to financially support the real sector. In addition, within the scope of support for the revival of economic life, KGF-guaranteed (Credit Guarantee Fund) Micro Enterprises Support, Tourism Support and Business Support loan packages for restaurant and cafeteria businesses were offered to customers within the framework of the Treasury-Backed Guarantee System.

Continuing its uninterrupted financing support to the agricultural sector, Ziraat Bank implemented the “Köyümde Yaşamak İçin Bir Sürü Nedenim Var (I Have Many Reasons To Live In My Village)” project in September 2020 with the aim of increasing the scale of enterprises operating in the field of small cattle.

Standing by its customers in their time of need, Ziraat Bank introduced the 36-month “Accumulated Agricultural Electricity and Irrigation Debt Closing Loan” product to producers in order to ensure that agricultural production in our country would continue without interruption during the pandemic, where sustainability of agricultural production and food supply security has become more crucial than ever before. Through this loan, the Bank allowed producers to pay their accumulated debts arising from their agricultural electricity and irrigation subscriptions over a reasonable period of time with a favorable interest rate.

Digital Solutions

Ziraat Bank continues its efforts to increase its productivity and offer digital solutions to its customers through advanced technology infrastructure investments.

Ziraat Bank has implemented many digital solutions to protect its customers and employees from the Covid-19 pandemic. Pressing ahead with its projects to digitalize branch processes and use digital channels more effectively in 2020, the Bank offered a wide array of facilitating innovations to Ziraat customers within the scope of these efforts.

In order to bring ease to the payment and collection transactions of its customers, Ziraat Bank;

• Put into practice applications making transactions with the QR code. Payments can be carried out by scanning the barcodes and QR codes on the tax and SGK (Social Security Institution) accrual receipts through Ziraat Mobile. The Bank also enabled the sharing of data matrices from Ziraat Mobile and fast money transfer through the QR code.
• Thanks to its integration with the Turkish Tax Office, the taxpayers were able to query information regarding their debt on the Tax Office website and pay them through their Ziraat Bank account.
• Enabled the collection of bills via Internet Banking.

In order to facilitate the money transfers;

• “Easy Address” definition transactions were provided for the use of customers through the internet, mobile and branch channels. Ziraat Bank accounts were accordingly secured with the customer’s mobile phone number, e-mail address, TCKN (Turkish ID number) Tax Identity No (VKN), Foreign Identity No (YKN) or passport number information, allowing the use of an Easy Address instead of account information in TL money transfer transactions.
• Integration with the Central Bank FAST system was ensured, enabling money transfer on a 24/7 basis.
• The Second Hand Vehicle Sales - Safe Payment System, which works in integration with the Notaries Union of Turkey Information System, was launched for the safe execution of second hand motor vehicle purchase and sale processes.

In order to facilitate insurance operations, the Bank;

• Provided the opportunity to carry out PPS sales and collections through the Bank’s website and mobile application.
• Provided DASK (Turkish Natural Catastrophe Insurance Pool, TCIP) sales and collections through the Bank’s website, internet branch and mobile application.

By using the national ID card in customer acquisition processes, it was possible to become a mobile banking customer without going to the branch, and also possible for customers to renew their internet/mobile banking password. Efforts on remote customer acquisition with the national ID card are ongoing.

As part of the banking software transformation project, middle tier and REST transformations were completed in 2019, and front-end transformation efforts continued in 2020. Basic banking software development studies for Ziraat Bank’s foreign subsidiaries also continue with the experience gained through this project.

As part of the efforts to integrate data management principles into the business processes, Ziraat Bank completed the technical infrastructure for the systematic management of the data dictionary and business dictionary concepts to ensure data ownership and data singularity.

Separately, the Bank has started work on the process of obtaining explicit consent via SMS in order to digitally follow up explicit consent statements which have been physically obtained from the branches within the context of KVKK (The law on the protection of personal data).

Excellence in the Customer and Employee Experience

Ziraat Finance Group Mobile Application The Ziraat Finance Group Mobile Application was launched to enable employees to access in-Bank applications from their mobile phones.

Ziraat Bank aims to provide excellence in the customer and employee experience by improving its processes with its productivity-oriented business model.

In 2020, Ziraat Bank continued to work on the centralization, improvement and automation of the operational processes in the Head Office and the branches.

Within this context Ziraat Bank;

• Expanded the use of Robotic Process Automation and the number of processes being performed by robotic software increased to 59.
• Centralized the removal/deed of release transactions and update of foreclosure information records transactions.
• Thanks to the automatic control of the appraisal report invoices, 81% of the invoices were checked by the system.
• As a result of improvement and simplification efforts regarding the “Tax Collection Transactions” process, tax screens were combined on a single screen, allowing faster and easier transactions.
• The “Renewal of Card Screens” project was initiated in order to simplify existing screens, combine screens with similar content, to provide easy and fast access to information and to design user-friendly screens, and the related screen enhancements were implemented in pilot branches.

The Ziraat Finance Group Mobile Application was launched to enable employees to access in-Bank applications from their mobile phones. With this application, employees were able to access various financial data pertaining to the Bank, follow innovations and carry out emergency notifications. It was also possible to receive Covid-19 notifications from this application, providing a significant advantage in taking action and monitoring the process quickly.

Branch managers could also provide approval through the Ziraat Finance Group Mobile Application. It was thus possible for branch processes to continue without interruption even when managers were out of the branch.

In 2020, a program was initiated to improve processes in the Head Office. Within the scope of this study, plans were put in place to improve processes in the Head Office, including 75 requests and 5 projects. These studies were aimed at ensuring that the Head Office would work more flexible and efficiently.

Development of the in-house virtual assistant application, “BİLGE”, continued in 2020. As part of the ongoing developments to respond to employees’ questions regarding human resources practices, the Bank’s Human Resources System and BİLGE were integrated. Development work on different internal processes is ongoing.

Within the scope of Ziraat Bank’s internal control operations, artificial intelligence/ machine learning models, whose infrastructure was prepared in the areas of instant loan and accounting operation controls, were used effectively. This model is aimed at identifying new risk areas early by performing anomaly analysis in addition to ensuring resource efficiency.

Investment in Human Resources
and the Learning Organization

Ziraat Bank supports the development of the skills of its employees - who are its most valuable asset - with the training opportunities it provides, pays regard to equality of opportunity by conducting competency and quantitative performance evaluation processes, and aims to increase employee motivation and corporate loyalty by continuously improving human resources practices. The Bank provides a working environment which enables new information to be acquired, shared and integrated into business processes in decision-making and working processes, ensuring that employees play an active role in identifying and solving business-related problems in order to achieve individual and corporate goals.

During the pandemic in 2020, Ziraat Bank focused on bringing ease to the lives of its employees and protecting them from the pandemic. Within this context;

• employees with chronic illness were given the opportunity to work remotely,
• in order to reduce the density of staff in the Head Office buildings, some employees were transferred to different locations,
• steps were taken to allow operational units to work remotely,
• the training content in the Banking School application, which can be accessed from computers and mobile devices, was enriched and training activities such as healthy living and having fun at home with children were added.

In order to ensure the development of Ziraat Finance Group employees in line with the strategies, the competence and numeric performance score processes continued in 2020.

Having initiated individual performance and competency assessment and premium system implementations in domestic subsidiaries, Ziraat Bank continues to work on bringing individual performance management systems into use in its foreign subsidiaries.

Ziraat Bank launched the “ZiraatliYORUM” practice so employees could share their wealth of knowledge and experience with all employees. Accordingly, employees are able to write content in areas ranging from banking issues to professional development, examples of good practice in the branch and day-to-day issues such as healthy living, and share their comments with other employees.

Providing continuous professional and personal development opportunities to its employees, Ziraat Bank averaged 4.33 hours of classroom training and 26 hours of e-learning per person during 2020.

Ziraat Finance Group employees received numerous awards in 2020 in recognition of the innovations they introduced:

• Ziraat Bank was given the highest ranking with the Brilliance award from the Business Brilliance Awards organization in the “Environmental and Corporate Sustainability” category in recognition of its innovative business processes and sustainability work.
• The Bank was awarded the Banking Technology and Best Retail Bank of Turkey awards in the 2020 awards given by the Global Banking & Finance Review magazine in recognition of progressive and inspiring innovations which stand out in excellence in the global banking and finance industry.
• While Ziraat Bank works to contribute to our country as “More Than A Bank”, it also aims to preserve its place in the hearts of its customers. Thanks to its efforts taken in line with this goal, Ziraat Bank was chosen as Turkey’s most loved bank for the fifth year in a row in the “Turkey’s Lovemarks” survey.
• Ziraat Bank’s “Analytical Human Resources Practices”, which were developed based on the vision of making decisions with data in human resources processes, aimed at monitoring the level of team development and taking actions appropriate for proactive development, were rewarded with the Golden Prize in the Employee Loyalty Program at the Golden Bridge Awards.
• In the annual PSM AWARDS 2020, Ziraat Bank received the Golden PSM Award in the “Innovative Customer Interaction and Experience” category with its work on the “National ID Card and Ziraat Mobile - Internet Banking Online Application & I Forgot My Password”. The Bank additionally received the Silver PSM Award in the “Social Responsibility” category under the heading of “Social Benefit” with its “Individual Basic Requirements Support Loan (BTİDK)”.
• Previously selected as the Public’s Favorite and the category winner in the Banking & Finance-Mobile Application category, Ziraat Mobile was chosen as the Best Mobile Application in 2020 in the Golden Spider web awards.
• In the Middle East Stevie Awards, Ziraat Bank was awarded the gold trophy with the “Best Operation Center Innovation Project” in the Innovation in the Business to Business Services category and the bronze trophy in the Business Technology Solutions category with its “Innovation in Operation Application” within the scope of the International Stevie Awards.

The Ziraat Finance Group

In order to offer a complete package meeting the financial requirements of its customers, Ziraat Bank generates integrated solutions with its domestic and international banking subsidiaries, branches and finance entities, offering these solutions to its customers in the most efficient manner by taking advantage of the economies of scale provided by being a finance group.

In 2020, Ziraat Bank continued to expand its international service network. Its number of branches in Georgia reached seven with the openings of Gldani and Varketili branches of JSC Ziraatbank Georgia in Tbilisi. Operating in Uzbekistan, UTBANK JSC opened its fourth branch in the city of Samarkand. In addition, the Ahmed Recepli branch of Ziraat Bank Azerbaijan ASC in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan Ziraat Int. Bank’s Turkistan branch were opened during the year.

In 2020, as part of affiliate acquisition/transfer operations, Ziraat Bank;

• Became a 2.86% shareholder in the credit rating agency, JCR Avrasya Derecelendirme A.Ş., together with 17 banks, Borsa Istanbul (BIST) and unions, which acquired a total stake of 85.05%.
• Became a shareholder in Birleşik İpotek Finansmanı A.Ş. (a lien financing company) the establishment work of which was completed in partnership with the Treasury, Borsa İstanbul (BIST), Banks and the unions.
• Became a partner of Bileşim Finansal Teknolojiler ve Ödeme Sistemleri A.Ş. (financial technologies and payment systems company) with a 33.34% stake.
• Within the scope of the project to unite the insurance/life-pension companies owned by public banks under a single roof, Ziraat Sigorta A.Ş. (Insurance) and Ziraat Hayat ve Emeklilik A.Ş. (Life and Pension) were transferred to the Turkey Wealth Fund.

Various work was carried out within the Ziraat Finance Group in 2020, including technological infrastructure projects.

While work to develop the main banking applications used by the foreign units continues, processes in the London and Greece branches were completed. Additionally, work on the Key Global Project started in order to bring the banking practices to Ziraat Finance Group standards.

The Finance Group Transfer System was put into practice which will ensure safe and fast money transfers within the Ziraat Finance Group with the transfer infrastructure used jointly with foreign branches and affiliates.

The renewal of the websites in all subsidiaries and foreign branches of the Bank to bring them in line with the corporate identity of the Ziraat Finance Group was completed.

Ziraat Bank transfers its know-how to all Group banks and international branches. In this context;

• Mobile/internet banking frontages of Group banks/international branches have been renewed under the consultancy of Ziraat Teknoloji.
• Efforts continue to extend the robotic process automation practice to the Ziraat Finance Group. In 2020, some processes in the London branch and KZI Bank operating in Kazakhstan were put into robotic automation.

Ziraat Bank continued its efforts to measure the compliance with the business model standards established to ensure that all subsidiaries and international branches provide services to similar levels with the same business model. The system is also subject to the performance system and the criteria applied for the system are constantly updated, thus guaranteeing continuous improvement of the business model at the same standards throughout Group companies.

Responsible Banking

Ziraat Bank aims to generate added value with its banking principle which respects people and the environment in accordance with its Sustainability Policy.

The policy, which specifies the principles of environmental and social impact management within the scope of lending operations, was accepted by the Bank’s Board of Directors as a complement to the Sustainability Policy. Accordingly, an environmental and social risk assessment will be carried out for all investment projects over a certain amount. Operations related to environmental and social impact management are planned to be brought into use systematically within the Bank.

The International Financial Institutions and Sustainability Management Division was established under the Finance Group Companies Management and Investor Relations Department to conduct sustainability operations in the Bank in a more effective and coordinated manner.

As part of the digitalizing contracts project, work was taken to ensure that the contracts and forms used in the Bank’s business processes could be viewed and approved through internet branch/mobile banking applications or by SMS/e-mail verification. With the project, 353 pages and 43 documents were included in the digital approval flow, saving 1,336 trees from being felled. The digitalization of new contracts and forms will continue in 2021 within the scope of the project.

Within the scope of Zero Waste Management, all of Ziraat Bank’s service buildings throughout the country were defined as separate “Facilities” in the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization’s Integrated Environmental Information System (EÇBS) and “Facility Supervisors” were appointed among unit/branch personnel. On the other hand, “Zero Waste” training, which was prepared by the Ministry, was completed by all personnel through the Bank’s training portal.

Uniform waste boxes needed within the scope of the practices were provided and sent to all units and branches in accordance with the number of floors and usage areas.