Financial Inclusion at İşbank
İşbank (Bank) is committed to advancing financial inclusion as a long-term responsibility to support sustainable and inclusive growth. İşbank adopts the World Bank’s definition of financial inclusion, ensuring that individuals and businesses have access to useful and affordable financial products and servicesthat meet their needs and are delivered in a responsible and sustainable way.
The Bank has developed specialized financial products targeting sectors such as agriculture, where it fosters technological innovations that contribute to sustainable farming practices. The Bank also prioritizes the empowerment of women and youth by offering tailored products and initiatives to increase their participation in the economy. Through these comprehensive initiatives, İşbank strives to drive sustainable development across diverse sectors and groups.
Our priority groups include underserved clients, particularly:
• Women and women-owned enterprises facing socioeconomic barriers,
• People living in rural and hard-to-reach areas including small farmers facing limited access to financial services,
• Microbusinesses with up to 10 employees and restricted access to mainstream finance,
• Other vulnerable groups, including people with disabilities and young people with limited access to financial services
Our financial inclusion strategy is built on three pillars:
• Finance: Expanding access to tailored solutions. We design products based on underserved clients’ needs and feedback focusing on microbusinesses, farmers, and women entrepreneurs, supported by international financing facilities.
• Facilitate: Increasing accessibility. We continuously enhance our physical and digital channels to ensure inclusive access to banking services through digital banking, entrepreneurship programs, and barrier-free services for disadvantaged and disabled clients.
• Inform: Empowering underserved groups through financial literacy, capacity-building workshops, and advisory services that are free of charge and open to both customers and non-customers. These initiatives improve financial decision-making and resilience.
Principles we apply:
• Designing products based on underserved clients' needs and feedback,
• Providing non-financial support such as education and advisory services to strengthen financial well-being,
• Protecting client rights through transparency, fair pricing, responsible lending, and secure data practices,
• Providing accessible complaint and grievance mechanisms to ensure fair and timely resolution of client concerns,
• Engaging with regulators and standard setters to strengthen inclusive finance markets and promote harmonized sector standards,
• Ensuring governance oversight, with board and senior management accountable for monitoring progress. Financial inclusion commitments are overseen by the Board of Directors through the Sustainability Committee and managed by senior executives responsible for monitoring progress, integrating inclusion goals into the Bank’s sustainability strategy, and reviewing results annually.
Through these commitments, İşbank seeks to remove barriers to finance, strengthen financial health, and contribute to a more inclusive financial system that empowers vulnerable groups and supports sustainable development.
Financial Inclusion Products, Services and Non-financial Support
1. Support to Women and Small Business Owners (SMEs)
İşbank recognizes the vital role of women entrepreneurs, microbusinesses and small enterprises in fostering inclusive economic growth and building a sustainable economy. As a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), the Bank is committed to advancing gender equality and increasing women's participation in economic activity. In line with this commitment, İşbank provides tailored financial and non-financial support to women entrepreneurs, microbusinesses and small business owners, contributing to their business development and strengthening their participation in the economy.
In 2025,
İşbank supports women's participation in business life and continues to offer the necessary financial and non-financial solutions to women entrepreneurs, who are an important driving force in sustaining economic and social development. In 2024, total lending to women entrepreneur customers reached TL 88 billion, corresponding to 88% of its 2023-2026 target of TL 100 billion. Building on this strong progress, the Bank revised its commitment in 2025, setting a new target to extend 250 billion TL in loans to women entrepreneurs by the end of 2028. In 2025, İşbank provided a total of TL 67 billion in loans to its female entrepreneur/ business owner customers. As of the end of the year, 62% of the TL 250 billion financing commitment has already been extended.
The Bank continued to offer women entrepreneur loans specific for women-owned micro, small or other businesses, through the "Women's Power in Entrepreneurship" project carried out in collaboration with TÜRKONFED. Zero-interest loans were provided to 40 entrepreneurial women under the guarantee of Applied Value Group (AVG) to address their financial needs alongside non-financial support.
İşbank also extended loans to 601 women entrepreneurs through 643 transactions, with a disbursement of TL 760,734,841.80 under its Woman Entrepreneurship Loan Campaign. Women entrepreneur customers were mainly in the retail, wholesale, research, consultancy and advertising sectors in 2025.
Furthermore, under the protocol signed with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the disbursements of USD 96 million in funds under the Financing and Advisory Support Program for Women in Business have been completed.
İşbank offers the Young SME Support Package to support young entrepreneurs and micro and small businesses that are newly established or seeking to grow their existing businesses. The package provides a range of banking products and services, including financing solutions on favorable terms, free cheque books, reduced commissions on letters of guarantee, free money transfers and EFT transactions, discounted POS rates, and preferential card campaigns.
In 2025, a total of TL 86,220,000 in cash loans was disbursed to 77 unique customers through 77 loans under the Young SME Support Package.
İşbank organizes financial literacy training and mentorship programs under the “WeLead" project co-executed with the Turkish Business Confederation (TÜRKONFED) to extend non-financial support to women-owned/led businesses. In the first phase of the Women's Empowerment in Entrepreneurship Project (2022-2023), a total of 5,043 women received financial literacy support. 49 female entrepreneurs received mentorship support, 26 female entrepreneurs received business development awards (Moka, Pazarama, İşnet, Maxipuan awards), and 3 female entrepreneurs received a trip to Silicon Valley as a prize. In the second phase of the project, spanning 2 years from 2024 to 2025; 11 field trainings, the WeLead Portal, and 24 online training events reached 6,973 female entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs.
The project has provided financial literacy support to a total of 12,016 female entrepreneurs by the end of 2025.
Within the second phase of the WeLead Project, 100 entrepreneurial women who completed the training received mentoring and coaching support for 6 months from successful professionals and experts in their respective fields. Additionally, Business development awards were given to 97 female entrepreneurs who completed the training sessions and participated in the mentoring program. As part of this support, İşbank subsidiaries Anadolu Sigorta, Pazarama, and İşNet offered advantageous packages to these entrepreneurial women and Maxipuan awards were given to entrepreneurial women.
Beyond the business development awards, 3 entrepreneurial women who successfully completed the training and mentoring phases were granted awards to visit London.
The third phase of the project, in 2026-2027, aims to reach 7,500 female entrepreneurs/aspiring female entrepreneurs and provide mentorship and business development support to 120 female entrepreneurs.
2. Support to Agriculture Sectors and Farmers
Founded in 1924 with the mission of supporting Türkiye's economic development, İşbank defines the agricultural sector as a strategic area of focus, given its critical role in food security, rural employment, and value creation. In response to challenges such as climate change, cost volatility, and the need for technological adaptation, the Bank complements financing with capacity-building initiatives, specialized branches, and knowledge and technology transfer programs to strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of farmers.
In 2025,
By the end of 2025, the outstanding balance of agricultural loans has reached TL 106 billion, supported by 56 Specialized Agricultural Branches, while the number of agricultural customers has approached 700 thousand. In order to support female farmers, İşbank has launched a special financing program. This program is for the women farmers who own agricultural businesses or operate small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises. Within this scope, 2890 loans totaling 2,03 billion TL were granted to 2446 female farmers in 2025.
The Farmer Gatherings initiative has been designed as a platform regularly organized across Türkiye's diverse agricultural regions to establish a direct communication channel between the Bank and farmers. Comprising components such as Technical Knowledge Transfer, Information on Financial Products and Services, Feedback Mechanisms, and Social Interaction and Networking, the program has been subject to a Social Impact Analysis to assess its effect on stakeholders and the social value it generates. In addition, the events were planned to cover all 81 provinces, and meetings were held with farmers in all of the provinces. A total of 35,000 farmers have participated in the “Next-Generation Farmer Meetings", with 3,000 farmers participating in 2025 alone. In 2025, a social impact analysis of the farmer meetings held in the previous year was conducted by Koç University Social Impact Forum (KUSIF). Conducted in accordance with the Social Return on Investment (SROI) methodology, the analysis found that the program generated TL 8,17 in social value for every TL 1 invested by Türkiye İş Bankası and a total of 31,969,544 units of social value. The largest portion of this value was concentrated on the primary beneficiaries, the farmers, with a total of 30,773,646 units of social value.
The Regenerative Transformation in Agriculture Project in Hatay was launched to support farmers affected by the earthquake who seek to transition to agroecology, aiming to ensure the sustainability of post-disaster agriculture and promote regenerative farming practices. The project offers 105 farmers comprehensive support encompassing training, consultancy, agricultural inputs, and marketing for their produce. By enabling pioneer farmers to adopt agroecological methods, the initiative fosters the spread of healthy food production, the preservation of soil, water, and biodiversity, and the restoration of disrupted market channels—thereby enhancing both ecological and economic resilience. The program will continue in 2026, marking its third year of implementation.
The "Digital Agriculture Solution" project, which was launched in 2019 and ended in 2024 by İşbank and Vodafone A.Ş., was intended to achieve more effective utilization of resources in agricultural production through advanced technological equipment and software, increased quality and productivity, and to support nationwide sustainable and value-added production. Within the scope of this project, the economic benefit provided by the Digital Agriculture Solution Stations, which were donated by İşbank amounted to TL 812.8 million in 2025.
3. Enabled Banking
İşbank is committed to ensuring barrier-free access to all financial services for individuals with disabilities, who represent an underserved segment of society. The Bank continuously invests in physical and digital accessibility, adapting its service channels based on feedback from disabled customers and regulatory standards.
In 2025,
The branches feature audible prompts and illuminated signage, tactile walking surface, disabled ramp and accessible ATM applications for visually- and hearing-impaired individuals. In 2025, a total of 313 customers carried out 838 transactions at İşbank ATMs using headphones, demonstrating the Bank's commitment to ensuring inclusive access for all. Ensuring full accessibility, the customers with disabilities can securely and easily perform such transactions as contract signing, account opening, borrowing and card application. While a 2% ratio of orthopedically accessible ATMs within a bank's total ATM network is adequate for regulatory compliance. The number of İşbank ATMs ('Bankamatik') that are accessible to people with orthopedic disabilities constitutes 9.2% of the total number of ATM machines In 2025, the number of ATMs accessible to people with orthopedic disabilities increased by 147, rising from 481 to 628; in addition, all 6,855 Bankamatik ATMs across the network are accessible for visually impaired customers, achieving a 100% accessibility rate for visually impaired customers.
All İşbank branches were vested in a structure that is accessible by orthopedically handicapped and visually-impaired customers. For hearing-impaired customers wishing to receive services from İşbank branches, employees who know sign language are employed at the Call Center in accordance with Regulation No. 29746 dated 18 June 2016 on the Accessibility of Banking Services. “Softphone" authorization is defined for the Bank-provided cell phones of authorized employees working in branch sales services, enabling them to have a video chat with Call Center agents who know sign language when serving hearing-impaired customers.
Furthermore, to facilitate communication between branch employees and customers with hearing impairments, branch employees can connect with sign-language representatives via video call through Cisco Jabber. These representatives provide interpretation support during customer interactions.
Since 2021, the Bank has provided its Remote Customer Acquisition service through video calls.
Over the years, the range of services available through the video-call channel has been expanded. In line with the Bank's accessible banking approach, enhancements have also been implemented to ensure that customers with hearing impairments can access and benefit from these services on an equal and effective basis.
The Bank's sign-language-supported Remote Customer Acquisition service has also been extended to legal entity customers. Mobile phone number updates and the removal of blocks on Mobile Approval Codes can now be completed via video call.
From 2023 through December 2025, a total of 72,457 video calls were conducted in sign language with customers with hearing impairments.
The average annual number of video calls provided to customers with hearing impairments during the 2024–2025 period represented a 45.7% increase relative to the 2023 baseline.