Supporting Customers to Grow Their Businesses Sustainably
Supporting Customers to Grow Their Businesses Sustainably
In addition to producing solutions that address the specififinancial needs of the SME’s, women entreprenurs and entrepreneurs who are key to the sustainable development of the economy, Garanti BBVA aims to support their growth and resilience, and to help them improve their environmental, social and ethical performance. To this end, the Bank offers training programs and consultancy services making use of its human and intellectual capital as well, while also making various platforms available to them and establishing collaborations. With its support to the economic sustainability of SMEs, Garanti BBVA also creates employment opportunities indirectly and contributes to the sustainable development of Turkey.
Thanks to its robust environmental and social risk assessment process, which is in line with best practices, Garanti BBVA supports all its customers, especially in the corporate and commercial segments, in managing their non-financial risks.
Various innovative Garanti BBVA platforms that aim to support companies in terms of managing their financials and businesses help customers grow their businesses in a sustainable manner and increase their resilience to new developments. The Bank offers information and advisory services that address the specific needs of the SMEs and contribute to their development such as Teşvikbul (Find Incentive), Şirketkur (Establish Your Business) and Garanti BBVA'lı İşler (Business@Garanti BBVA).
Garanti BBVA helps flourish the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Turkey, and targets to support and accelerate early startups and initiatives with the potential to attract investment and grow.
Through Garanti BBVA Partners Acceleration Program, the Bank supports early startups of any scale and sector, the SMEs and growing ventures. Garanti BBVA creates a holistic support mechanism by providing various and differentiated touch at every stage of entrepreneurial life cycle by providing office space, mentoring, networking, marketing support, training. Garanti BBVA facilitates women entrepreneurs’ access to financing, executes free-of-charge educational collaborations to ensure sustainability such as the Women Entrepreneurs Executive School, and encourages them to realize their full potentials through Turkey’s Woman Entrepreneur Competition. With the Women Entrepreneurs Meetings, which attracted the participation of 9,720 women to date, the Bank seeks to help women entrepreneurs build new collaborations and penetrate new markets through experience and information sharing that they need. The SROI (Social Return on Investment) value of the Women Entrepreneurs Management School project was estimated as 5.
In 2018, Sustainability and Risk Management Workshop was organized once again, where stakeholders including customers and non-governmental organizations were informed on the most current topics related to sustainable business models, such as innovative environmental, social and governance practices in Turkey, green financing options, risks stemming from digitalization, new trends in relation to transparency and non-financial reporting and environmental risk perception in the insurance industry. In 2018, 33 corporate and commercial customers and financial institutions were informed one-on-one about international best practices in environmental and social risk management. 29 different environmental and social topics were addressed in all these meetings and contacts. 37 visits were paid to corporate and commercial customers to drive them to improve their risk management systems in this respect.