İşbank

Atatürk at İşbank head office on October 22, 1929.

Following the culmination of World War I in 1918 and the subsequent dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, Turkey was declared a republic and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was elected by parliament as the first president of Turkey. Atatürk was quick to realise that the government needed a national bank to rebuild Turkey's economy following the debacle of the war. İşbank, the first truly national bank in the Turkish Republic was founded on 26 August 1924 at the First Economy Congress in İzmir.[8]

Atatürk appointed Celâl Bayar, his close aide and then the Minister of Exchange Construction and Settlement as the president of the newly formed bank. İşbank began operations with two branches and 37 staff under the leadership of Celâl Bayar, its first general manager. The bank was established with a capital of 1 TL Million of which 250'000 TL was covered by Atatürk, and the rest by private investors.[9] In 1927, the capital was raised by 2 Million TL so it could be merged with the National Credit Bank as equal partners.[10]

Established to utilize the smallest savings and transfer them to development, İşbank played a major role in the establishment and development of savings awareness in Turkish society, bringing the first piggy banks to Turkey in 1928.[11] In the following years, İşbank began to expand by opening branches across the country. In 1932, İşbank opened branches in Hamburg, Germany and Alexandria, Egypt, becoming the first Turkish bank to open branches abroad. In the 1950s,[12] Isbank expanded its portfolio of subsidiaries. The bank's subsidiaries became the driving force of Turkish industry, investing in and financing a wide range of businesses, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Having accelerated branch expansion in the 1960s and 1970s, İşbank paid special attention to the development of its overseas branch network in the 1980s. In the 1980s, İşbank began to offer a wide range of services to its customers in line with its multi-channel banking vision. In 1982, İşbank introduced the first ATMs to Turkey, and at the same time, the name "cash machine" became a trademark. With the launch of the "Blue Line" in 1991[13] and the first internet branch in 1997, İşbank assumed a pioneering role in this field. Since those years, İşbank has been carrying out R&D activities and studies on the use of new technologies in order to increase the quality and diversity of its services in line with the wishes and expectations of its customers.

• The use of cheques for daily transactions.
• Initiating electronic banking in the country.
• Introduction of the ATM.
• Overseas branches in Europe and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
• Saving accounts.
• Mutual funds.
• Introduction of child's coin bank.
• Operation of an in-house securities division.
• Interactive banking service since July 1996
• Deployment of Netmatik machines, to enable online banking among clients without access to a computer.
• Introduction of mobile banking on WAP enabled GSM phones.
• Bankamatik(+) which allows the money to be put directly to the account of the client.
• Introduction of Maximum Cash Point which allows clients to draw cash from POS machine where there is no ATM available.

Countries in which İşBank has operations, branches and representative offices

Türkiye İş Bankası building on Ulus Square in Ankara

In May 1998, 12.3% of the Bank's total shares previously held by the Turkish Treasury have been sold to national and international investors in a public offering. The states Pension Fund has brokered the offering of stock options to employees and retired staff in the company which has reached 41.5%. As of December 2021, 37.3% of Isbank shares are held by Isbank's own Pension Fund, 28.1% are represented by Republican People's Party (CHP) and 34.6% are free float.^[14] In February 2019 the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he advocated of transferring the shares held by the CHP to the treasury.^[14]

Işbank’s shares are listed on Borsa Istanbul and its depository receipts are traded on London Stock Exchange as GDR (REG S). As of Decemder 2021, İşbank's market value was TRY 34.1 billion.^[14]

• List of companies of Turkey
• List of banks in Turkey

• Annual Report 2019 (PDF), İşbank, 2019, archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-04-15
• Annual Report 2015 (PDF), İşbank, 2015, archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2016
• Isbank on the Forbes Global 2000 List, 2015, retrieved 17 June 2016