• Profile
  • TSKB in Brief
  • TSKB's Subsidiaries
  • Products and Services Of TSKB
• Performance
  • Value Creation
  • Awards & Recognitions
  • CEO's Assessment
• Approach
  • TSKB's Sustainable Banking Strategy
  • TSKB's Sustainability Priorities
• Dialogue
  • TSKB and Stakeholder Engagement
  • TSKB's Stakeholders
  • 2010 Stakeholder Dialogue Highlights
• Sustainability and Environmental Issues
  • Sustainable Banking at TSKB
  • Sustainable Banking Performance: the Economic Dimension
  • The Renewable Energy Sector and TSKB
  • TSKB Energy Index
  • TSKB, Climate Change, and the Environment
  • TSKB's Efforts on Behalf of Sustainability and the Environment
  • Who Wouldn't Want to Be Sustainable?
  • ISO 14001 Certification
  • The Structure of the TSKB Environmental Management Team
  • TSKB's Environment Policy
  • TSKB's Environmental Impact
  • Sustainable Banking Performance: the Environmental Dimension
  • Developments in External Environmental Impact
• Corporate Governance
  • Absolute Compliance With Laws and Regulations
  • TSKB's Corporate Governance Structure
  • Compliance With Corporate Governance Principles
  • Risk Management at TSKB
  • Prevention of Money-Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism
  • Relations with Suppliers
• People
  • Human Resources and the Workplace at TSKB
  • The TSKB Performance Management System
  • TSKB Compensation and Reward System
  • TSKB Human Resources Structure
  • Human Rights and Employee Rights at TSKB
  • Competency Development and Training
  • Health and Safety at TSKB
  • Commuting By Sea
  • Internal Communication at TSKB
• The Community
  • Social Responsibility at TSKB
  • "Environment: Our Priority": Past and present
  • The NGOs that TSKB Collaborates with
• Summarized TSKB Goals and Performance
• Appendices
  • About This Report
  • Statement GRI Application Level Check
  • Global Reporting Initiative Cross Index
  • Online Sustainability
  • Imprint
  • Communication and Service Channels

CEO’s Assessment

Esteemed TSKB stakeholders:

TSKB’s corporate history represents one of the most impressive examples of sustainable growth. It is growth that has been and continues to be supported by our commitment to customers, employees, shareholders, and the public at large–in other words our commitment to all of our stakeholders. Our past is also a story of an integrated process of value and employment creation in support of economic development on many different fronts.

TSKB celebrated its 60th year of service in 2010 and we may take justifiable pride for the many years of success that have brought us to where we are today. At this point, the most important question which we need to consider and to which we must find an answer is concerned with the degree to which we possess the elements that we need to sustain our corporate success on a long-term basis. Corporate sustainability is an expression of having the self-confidence and strength to be successful in the long term. TSKB is a service provider that has these attributes and is focused on the future. The elements that contribute to our self-confidence are not just our financial strength but also our human resources, our management competencies, and the sustainable banking strategies that make TSKB unique.

Corporate sustainability is an expression of having the self-confidence and strength to be successful in the long term. TSKB has these attributes and is focused on the future.

In terms of financial structure, TSKB is extremely strong indeed. That strength is what has enabled it to continue serving customers by successfully managing every sort of market conjuncture that it has encountered throughout its history, however adverse it may have been. Not surprisingly therefore, strong performance that we registered in the immediate aftermath of the recent global crisis represents one of the most important and current indicators of our financial sustainability.

Our human resources are a no less important cornerstone of our corporate sustainability. The dedicated people who sincerely identify with our sustainable banking philosophy, whose day-by-day efforts contribute to our performance, and who strive to serve our customers are the true heroes of TSKB’s long-term success.

Our strategy is correct and it will continue to generate the momentum that we will need as we move forward on the path of long-term success. We believe that the key to sustainable development is sustainable banking and we continue to act in line with that conviction. At the same time, we are also well aware that we have a responsibility for the sustainable future not just of Turkey but of the entire world and that our actions must be guided by that responsibility.

Climate change and environmental problems at many different levels confront us serious issues that are of the utmost concern to the future of humanity. TSKB has itself been making its awareness of this fact a major component of its business processes ever since the 1980s.

The level of corporate awareness, capacity, and sustainable banking that TSKB has achieved today make it an exemplary financial institution not just in Turkey but in its own region and throughout the world.

A large part of our Bank’s contributions to efforts towards preventing global climate change and dealing with environmental problems are manifested in the lending activities that also make up the basis of its product line. TSKB focuses on investment projects that will help protect the environment and minimize the adverse effects of climate change and it provides them with financial support. To accomplish this, it always makes use of the most advanced project assessment, management, and oversight methodologies that are currently available.

TSKB’s mission is one of supporting sustainable development. It fulfills this mission by supplying financial resources to customers in many different sectors, the foremost of which is energy, while also providing a variety of consultancy and financial mediation services as well. Immediately after having strengthened its standing as the leading financial services provider for those engaged in renewable energy, our Bank added the financing of energy efficiency projects to its product and service lineup in 2009 as an essential component of its sustainable banking strategy.

Rapidly expanding its service capacity in the area of energy efficiency, TSKB has so far provided financing for seventeen such projects: three in 2009 and fourteen in 2010. Our Bank is committed to working with international business partners in its ongoing efforts to supply resources to energy efficiency projects that contribute towards lowering the energy-density of Turkish industry while also reducing industry-sourced carbon emissions.

We believe that a more livable world is achievable only through responsible measures and initiatives that are undertaken to address environmental and climate change issues.

What confronts us now as a rapidly-developing country is the extraordinarily critical process of making the transition to a low-carbon economy. TSKB is focused on working with customers who similarly identify with its goal of contributing towards Turkey’s sustainable economic development.

Just as in the past so too in the future, our Bank is determined to work in close collaboration with its customers as it seeks to maximize total output and thus contribute towards economic development. At the same time, our Bank will also remain on the lookout for ways to encourage the creation of increasingly more added value for society while ensuring that regulatory, environmental, and social risks are managed in the best way possible.

Esteemed TSKB stakeholders:

This report is the second in the series of studies published by TSKB in compliance with internationally recognized sustainability reporting standards. It has been prepared in accordance with Level B of the version of the GRI Reporting Guide that was released at the beginning of 2011. In that capacity, this report represents yet another first for our sector from both aspects.

In this report, TSKB presents the results of its interactive communication with stakeholders in the most transparent way possible. In the “Dialogue” section, you will find detailed information about our findings based on stakeholder engagement analysis along with our Bank’s approach to dealing with stakeholders’ demands, expectations, and criticisms and our action plans for accomplishing this.

Stakeholder engagement analysis has provided us with a wealth of valuable information that is useful both in identifying the position that TSKB occupies today and in laying out its long-term roadmap into the future. For this reason, I take this opportunity to thank all the stakeholders who agreed to take part in this study and were willing to share their valuable opinions with us.

Although our customers, APEX business partners, and international stakeholders tell us that they are extremely satisfied with our service processes and professionalism, one of our corporate objectives must inevitably be to further strengthen that satisfaction in both the medium and long terms. Another and equally imperative objective will be to further expand our dialogue with NGOs, which we believe fulfill functions of the utmost importance in society and which have occasionally expressed criticisms concerning our activities. This process will make it possible to pay much closer attention to what they say and to integrate their valuable opinions into our own service processes.

Success in banking–as indeed in any business–depends on open and clear communication with stakeholders. Open and clear communication is absolutely fundamental to confidence and provides the only foundation on which may be erected the long-term, strong relationships through which the interests of every party may be fairly balanced. Being open demands that one listen to and understand others; being clear demands that one express one’s thoughts unmistakably. It gives me pleasure to say here that both approaches provide the basis for all of TSKB’s stakeholders relations.

Esteemed TSKB stakeholders:

In 2010 TSKB once again was deemed to be worthy of being cited for its contributions to sustainable banking in the Developing Countries category in Eastern Europe under the auspices of the Sustainable Banking Awards conducted jointly by Financial Times and the IFC.

This was the third year in a row that TSKB has earned this award for its sector and its country. It is especially meaningful insofar as it represents the stature that TSKB has achieved. The award is also concrete evidence that TSKB recognizes and fulfills its responsibilities for a sustainable future not just for Turkey but for the whole world.

TSKB’s prime goal is to continue fulfilling its role as an exemplary and pioneering bank in a rapidly changing world by undertaking still newer projects and creating added value for all of its stakeholders in the future as well.

We believe that a more livable world is achievable only through responsible measures and initiatives that are undertaken to address environmental and climate change issues. In the years ahead, TSKB intends to continue building upon its successes in this area at the global level. In that respect therefore, the Bank regards the “Sustainable Bank of the Year” award as a symbol of its systematic and sober approach to the environment and sustainability and to continue focusing on being a worthy recipient of that recognition by raising the standards of its performance even higher.

We are determined to respond to the challenges of global warning bells.

As this report was in preparation, the International Energy Agency announced new figures indicating that worldwide greenhouse gas emissions reached a record-breaking level in 2010. The 29.3 gigaton emission level recorded in 2008 dipped in 2009 largely due to the effects of the global economic crisis. By resuming their upward trend and reaching 30.6 gigatons in 2010, greenhouse gas emissions attained their highest level since records started being kept.

This adverse development was triggered by a rise in the use of fossil fuels. Experts on the subject are now saying that it makes the international goal of limiting the rise in the average global temperature to just two degrees Celsius has become even more difficult than ever.

The period immediately ahead is going to be fraught with difficulties as much for individuals as for economic actors such as ourselves. A rapidly growing world population, environmental pollution, and increasingly limited resources will compel us all to engage in a search for new equilibriums.

TSKB’s prime goal is to continue fulfilling its role as an exemplary and pioneering bank in a rapidly changing world by undertaking still newer projects and creating added value for all of its stakeholders in the future as well. TSKB is well aware of the dangers that confront the world and the people who live in it and it is committed to doing whatever is necessary to deal with them.

TSKB is a bank which has integrated the issues of climate change, sustainable development, and transition to a low-carbon economy into all of its processes. This is what uniquely positions TSKB competitively among the other members of its sector while further amplifying its service strengths.

The uninterrupted support of our stakeholders is what will ensure our long-term success while enabling us to make the most effective and productive use of both our self-confidence and our abilities.

In closing, I extend my sincerest appreciation and respects to everyone who contributes towards our sustainable banking philosophy.

 

Fevzi Onat
CEO