Published: March 14, 2012
Turkish bank is developing mobile and internet products to improve its business.
Social media such as Facebook and Twitter is transforming Turkish lender Akbank’s business, says Galip Tözge, the bank’s executive vice-president of consumer banking.
“In our vision alternative delivery channels are not alternative anymore,” he told the Retail Banking in Europe conference in Brussels.
The bank has been using smart-phone applications, social networking site Facebook and micro blogging site Twitter to sell its products and improve its customer services in a country he describes as a dynamic environment for banks.
Driving this is one of the youngest populations in the world – half of Turkey’s 74mn citizens are under the age of 30. It also has the world’s sixth largest Facebook community.
It’s Tözge’s job to make money from this opportunity. “It is not the number of fans on Facebook [you have], it is the number of products you sell,” he says. “That is the challenge.”
The bank, which made a US$1.7bn profit last year and saw the value of its loan portfolio grow by 35%, started selling products such as credit cards through the site a year ago. “I have a dream to put a branch on Facebook,” Tözge says. “I have to be where my customers are. They are on Facebook more than in my branches.”
The bank also uses Twitter to manage its customer services, a move that Tözge says could save the bank money. “[We] hope to close our call centre soon,” he said. “It’s too expensive. Twitter is much easier for handling customer complaints.”
Akbank has also targeted mobile phone users, a market where ownership is almost 90% of the population. It’s an important market for the bank – it surveyed its customers and discovered that 16% of them would rather lose their thumb than their phone. “The mobile phone is becoming a vital organ,” Tözge said.
The bank’s mobile offering has smart-phone applications for insurance and for transferring money, which even the unbanked market can use to receive funds through ATMs without a bank card. The application has some 100,000 downloads in the first three months. Tözge says the system is so easy “even my mum can use it”.