In 2024, the Turkish economy started rebalancing. As the rate hikes and simplification steps undertaken in line with the tight monetary policy that was started to be implemented supported more effective market operation, macroprudential measures executed with the aim of reaching inflation targets curbed the credit growth and the profitability of the banking industry, also due to financial tightening, in the second half of the year.
On another front, steps taken for the sake of sustainable economic growth enabled the acquisition of a more consistent structure by exchange rates, a decline in country risk premiums, and access to low-cost external funds. As FC loans became more attractive in commercial loans, exporter companies had broader access to these loans for foreign trade finance purposes.
We value making Türk Eximbank’s support to exporters a sustainable and effective one.
In 2024, while Türkiye displayed a good performance in exports and acquired additional share in a shrinking market, Türk Eximbank extended the highest export support in its history despite the geopolitical instability in our near geography and the negative demand conditions in the European Union, our key foreign market.
During the reporting period, we have striven to generate alternative solutions and provide the maximum support to exports in an effort to compensate for the hardships the exporters have in accessing financing. We took care to prioritize high added-value strategic sectors and the SMEs in our support facilities, and we took action to diversify collaterals. Through alternative collateral types, we made it possible for exporters to benefit from Türk Eximbank credit programs at lower costs thanks to our credit collateralization diversification, which offers easy access to financing and advantages in terms of low cost.
We have optimally used our borrowing facilities and tried to cater to our exporters’ demands for working capital and investment finance. By this means, we have outperformed our financing target with a credit support of USD 24.1 billion at end-2024. Our ongoing policy to broaden our base implemented in line with our strategy helped increase the ratio of SMEs within exporters benefiting from the Bank’s support mechanisms from the order of 70% in 2020 to 83.4% at 2024 year-end.
On the back of two capital increases carried out in 2024 by the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Treasury and Finance, our paid-in capital rose to TL 55.3 billion.
Paying regard to our exporters’ need for long-term financing, we have extended the maturity of TL loans from one year to three years. As a result, the share of TL loans within our total credit support reached 43%.
Although insurable export volume with respect to payment forms relatively declined in 2024, our credit insurance volume came to USD 24.6 billion at the end of the year.
Hence, we have extended our highest support to date with USD 49 billion in total in credit and insurance support to exporters.
Thanks to our active marketing initiatives, the number of exporters benefiting from our Bank’s products and services reached 17,838 in 2024.
The amount of support we have extended under the Buyer’s Credits since the incorporation of the Bank approached approximately USD 4 billion. Through Buyer’s Credits, we are helping Turkish exporters and contractors achieve competitive advantage in international markets; hence acting as a facilitator for them to undertake more projects and export more goods and services.
As the CBRT-sourced Rediscount Credits have been our most affordable TL credit product in 2024 as always, daily limits of Rediscount Credits were increased to a level catering to exporters’ demands through the limit increases the CBRT carried out in 2024 so that exporters have continual access to this financing facility in the shortest time possible when they need it. At present, TL 2.2 billion of the TL 4 billion daily limit disbursed via intermediary banks to exporters goes through Türk Eximbank. Our Rediscount Credit balance at year-end 2024 was TL 342 billion.
We have taken important steps towards enhancing the quality of our insurance service and diversifying our support mechanisms.
2024 has been a year of major progress for our insurance activities. We have broken new ground in our insurance activities based on an approach centered on exporters’ needs and satisfaction. We have digitized our business processes as we have taken important steps towards enhancing the quality of our service and diversifying our support mechanisms offered to exporters.
As we have made the buyer’s limits allocated under insurance programs available for an indefinite period of time with the aim of alleviating the operational workload on insured customers, we have expedited our allocation processes and let our exporters reach the suitable limits they need quickly. We have launched our Participation-Based Export Receivable Insurance product and started insuring the credit sales of our interest-averse exporters. We also started expanding the use of our Short-Term Domestic Receivable Insurance product to let our exporters carry on with their operations seamlessly and eliminate any collection issues associated with their domestic receivables so that they maintain an unbroken focus on exports.
We have classified insured customers into segments according to their export potentials, risks and performances, and we have diversified the products and services to be furnished in alignment with their needs.
We have introduced the turnover-based receivable insurance practice to alleviate the operational workloads of our exporters, to make the best practices in the receivable insurance sector available from our Bank and to increase the insurance support we provide.
In 2024, we started signing cooperation agreements with brokers and banks to diversify our sales channels for our insurance activities and grow the support we make available to exporters. We have renewed the reinsurance treaties with Türk Reasürans as well as seven international reinsurers for sharing the risks we underwrite due to our insurance activities with reinsurance companies.
We are working to expand our inclusion on the back of our products that comply with the Principles and Standards of Participation Banking.
It is a strategic priority for us to diversify and broaden our products in participation banking area in a bid to offer alternative financing facilities to exporters.
We have introduced the participation banking window model to cover exporters that were unable to access Türk Eximbank schemes because of their preference for participation banking products within our service scope. To that end, we have also set up the Islamic Banking Advisory Committee.
In this framework, we have worked hard over the last two years to diversify the products that are compliant with the Principles and Standards of Participation Banking. We have obtained alternative funding sources for exporters. The working capital and long-term investment financing support that conform to participation principles we have provided came close to USD 1 billion in total.
We are planning to broaden the span of participation-based (takaful) receivable insurance we have introduced in cooperation with a participation bank in 2024 through agency agreements to be concluded with other participation banks. On another front, we will start offering the “Export Support Financing Through Participation Banks” product that we are currently working on both directly and via participation banks in 2025.
As we seek to diversify funding sources, we are increasing our sustainability-themed sources.
Taking the lead among the banks securing the highest amount of funds from international capital markets and financial institutions, Türk Eximbank also fulfills the requirements for facilitating access to these funds.
Türk Eximbank measures its performance in energy saving, water consumption, paper consumption and similar areas, and also calculates its carbon footprint, which puts it in a position to derive cost advantage in targeted syndications.
In 2024, our Bank obtained sources worth USD 8.4 billion in total from international capital markets and financial institutions, including USD 3.6 billion in supranational funds secured within the scope of sustainability and sustainability-linked syndicated loan.
In 2024, we secured funding worth USD 1.5 billion in total with a maximum maturity of 10 years from the World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Islamic Development Bank to be on-lent at affordable terms to exporters for their green transformation.
Through these funds obtained, we are aiming to support our exporters’ investments for reducing their carbon emissions towards sustainability initiatives that contribute to the combat against climate crisis, such as renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, waste management and so on.
Furthermore, we are able to support the green transformation investments of our customers opting for participation banking products with the sources we secure from the Islamic Development Bank, Emirates Islamic Bank and International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation. We are intending to broaden our participation financing products by increasing the sources we provide from the capital markets with our planned Islamic-bond (sukuk) issuance in 2025. While we offer sustainable financing facilities to our exporters particularly for their investment projects on the back of successful borrowing deals, we will continue to grow in participation banking segment.
In the transitional phase to the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that will start operating in 2026, we will make available low-cost funds we obtain from international institutions to provide the necessary financial support for exporters’ compliance with the process.
We are backing digital transformation with human resource transformation.
We are spending efforts for achieving higher efficiency with our online branch in line with our digitalization strategy in pursuit of enhanced quality and increased speed of our service delivery. We are targeting to diversify the online transactioning facilities of exporters by increasing the transaction sets and functions offered digitally in a bid to further upgrade user experience.
We are developing digitalization solutions for application and banking processes with the goal of offering faster and easier access to our products and services. Among the examples of these solutions are the automated decision support system that allocates a credit line based on automatic limit suggestions up to a certain amount, and electronic commitment closure that accesses customs declaration forms through the system and completes the procedures without requiring hard-copy documents.
We have set up a new data center equipped with cutting edge technology in our new building we have relocated to in 2024. In parallel, all our IT applications were updated and upgraded. Our technology level and applications have become one of the best in the banking industry.
We have realized an important structural transformation in human resources. We established a performance-based management system. We achieved significant outcomes in the creation of a corporate culture and engagement. We are conducting employee engagement and internal customer satisfaction survey each year to enhance service quality and create a team culture. We are convinced that the service quality we offer our exporters and total quality will improve as we increase employee satisfaction and engagement.
Human resource and the level of technology represent the two most important building blocks, and at the same time, improvement areas, in our strategic roadmap. We believe that backing digital transformation with the transformation of the human resource is the key to success.
The development of our IT human resource over the last five years serves as both quantitative and qualitative mainstays of our actions.
Our expectations are firmer as we step into 2025.
In 2025, we will continue to support exportation of value-added goods. Our strategic priorities include, in particular, medium-high and high-technology exporting sectors, FC-earning service sectors and exporter SMEs. We also believe in the importance of our support to contracting business in terms of promoting FC-earning transactions. In this context, our leap forward by acquiring a shareholding interest in the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) will contribute to the presence and project undertaking capacities in the region for Turkish exporters and contracting companies. Through this partnership, which is strategically important also with respect to our country’s Africa Partnership Policy, we are targeting to act as a bridge between contractors and employers in projects.
Also, we will continue to support investments targeted at reducing carbon footprint and projects that will increase exports volume and production efficiency with low-cost, long-term financing facilities.
Diversification of collaterals and increasing cooperation with credit guarantee agencies will remain as topics of importance, as always.
We have set delivering receivables insurance to a broader audience using new sales channels as a priority in 2025. We are targeting increased transaction volume in the coming period on the back of agency agreements to be signed with banks and similar innovative practices.
We will introduce new participation-based programs designed to broaden the use of our insurance product and low-cost financing options to exporters preferring participation banking products.
We will add momentum to our activities that back our vision of offering a single-point of solution to all foreign trade-related needs of our exporters. In an effort to furnish greater support to exporters on the trade finance front, we will introduce foreign trade applications. We will make sure that our Bank offers top quality in any service associated with foreign trade that exporters receive from other banks. We will also shift our focus towards new types of exports such as e-exports and specialized financial solutions for service exports.
We will act with a holistic perspective for sustaining and further increasing our contribution to the international competitiveness of Turkish exporters with the financing support and receivable insurance that we provide at appropriate maturity and cost, guaranteeing faster and higher quality service delivery to exporters by Türk Eximbank while continuing to develop solutions that cater to their needs.
In line with our country’s target of being an economy that generates current surplus, at Türk Eximbank, we will keep working with even greater dedication to help our companies exporting goods and services from our country increase their goods and services exportation volumes in a more sustainable manner by increasing the support we extend to them.
Ali GÜNEY
General Manager
