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 like small farmers,
• 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.
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.
1. Support to Women Business Owners
İşbank firmly believes that eradicating gender inequality, increasing women's participation in economic activity and growing the women workforce are essential for sustainable economy. As a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), the Bank is committed to advancing gender equality at all levels. To this end, İşbank provides tailored financial and non-financial support to women entrepreneurs.
In 2024,
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. İşbank's total lending to women entrepreneur customers reached 88 billion TL, corresponding to 88% of its 2023-2026 target of 100 billion TL. 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.
The Bank continued to offer women entrepreneur loans specific for women-owned micro, small or other businesses, EBRD Tur-WiB Program for Financing and Advisory Support to Women-Led Businesses, and İGE (Export Development Inc.) Supporting Women in Export package.
Under the EBRD TurWiB Program, the Bank disbursed TL 363 million in 209 loans to 197 women entrepreneurs in 2024, primarily in the retail and wholesale sectors.
Furthermore, 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 1,348 women entrepreneurs through 1534 transactions under its Woman Entrepreneurship Loan Campaign. Women entrepreneur customers were mainly in the retail, wholesale, research, consultancy and advertising sectors in 2024.
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. Besides the Bank's customers, non-customer women entrepreneurs also attended a total of 15 training and inspiration events. A total of 3,621 women entrepreneurs participated in these trainings, which focused on two main pillars: gender equality awareness and technical capacity building.
Within the scope of the WeLead Project, 50 entrepreneurial women who completed the training received mentoring and coaching support for 6 to 9 months from successful professionals and experts in their respective fields. Additionally, Türkiye İş Bankası provided business development support to 28 women who successfully completed the mentoring process. As part of this support, İşbank subsidiaries Moka, Pazarama, and İşNet offered advantageous packages to these entrepreneurial women.
Beyond the business development awards, 3 entrepreneurial women who successfully completed the training and mentoring phases were granted awards to visit Silicon Valley in the United States.
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 2024,
The Bank's total agricultural loan portfolio reached TL 99.4 million, supported by 56 Specialized Agricultural Branches, while the number of agricultural customers surpassed half a million.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, 433 loans totaling 174.325 million TL were granted to 390 female farmers in 2024.
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. The analysis covered 41 Farmer Gatherings held throughout 2024, engaging producers who participated in the events as well as Bank employees. Findings revealed that the initiative created approximately 2,864 units of social value in total, with the majority accruing to farmers as the primary beneficiaries. Farmers accounted for 2,215 units of social value, evidencing the program's success in knowledge transfer and in fostering economic confidence; in particular, the application of new knowledge and practices emerged as the main driver of this value creation.
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. 74 farmers, including 36 women, have committed to agroecological production through the program.
The "Digital Agriculture Solution" project, which was launched in 2019 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. The economic benefit generated in 2024 thanks to Digital Agriculture Solution Stations donated by İşbank under the project amounted to TL 692.5 million.
2. Individuals with Health Condition or Impairments
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 2024,
All İşbank branches were vested in a structure that is accessible by orthopedically handicapped and visually-impaired customers. The branches feature audible prompts and illuminated signage, tactile walking surface, disabled ramp and accessible ATM applications for visually- and hearing impaired individuals. In 2024, a total of 512 customers carried out 1,371 transactions at İşbank ATMs using headphones, demonstrating the Bank’s commitment to ensuring inclusive access for all. Ensuring full accessibility, thecustomers 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, İşbank's orthopedically accessible ATMs account for 7.4% of its total ATM network. The number of the Bank's ATMs accessible by orthopedically handicapped individuals increased by 71 from 410 to 481, the total number of enabled Bankamatik ATMs increased by 250 to reach 6,490.
For hearing-impaired customers wishing to receive service from İşbank branches, employees who know sign language are employed at the Call Center in accordance with the Regulation no. 29746 dated 18 June 2016 on Accessibility of Banking Services. “Sotfphone" authorization is defined for the Bank-provided cell phones of authorized employees working in branch sales services for hearing impaired customers to have a videochat with Call Center agents who know sign language. The number of videocalls offered to hearing-impaired customers increased by 75.9% year-on-year.