Dear Business Partners,

The effects of the pandemic, which deeply affected all our lives and the economy beginning by 2020, finally started to ease in the year we left behind. While the growth trend in the global economy returned to pre-pandemic levels, the Turkish economy recorded a significant growth of 11 percent.

The banking sector has an important role in this growth. The year-on-year increase in the total loan size of the Turkish banking industry of 37.05 percent is an indicator of this role. Accordingly, the asset size of the industry has continued its development, increasing by 50.9 percent, while its ratio to GDP approached 1.3 percent. By the end of 2020, this rate was 1.21 percent.

However, the reignition of the economy after its almost complete stall during pandemic, brought some difficulties with it. The most important of these was the deterioration in price stability, mainly due to the rise in food and energy prices. Inflation in OECD countries has reached the highest level in the last 20 years. In Turkey, with the serious depreciation of the Turkish lira against foreign exchange rates, the inflation rate has reached levels that we have not witnessed for quite some time. This brought an increase in the share of foreign currency deposits in total deposits.

Due to this fact, the CBRT directly intervened to ease the exchange rate and has taken steps to restore confidence in the Turkish lira by introducing new instruments such as currency-protected deposit accounts.

Along with the revival in the Turkish economy, where industrial production has increased throughout the year, the factoring industry saw a rise of 35.3 percent in assets and 33.6 percent in receivables volume, in line with the banking industry.

As Ekspo Faktoring, providing an ethical, transparent and professional service at the highest standards in order to contribute to the added value created by our business partners in this period when the wheels of the economy started to revolve again, we managed to increase our equity by 22.5 percent and our transaction volume by 80 percent compared to the previous year. While 64.5 percent of our turnover was realized through our domestic transactions, the ratio of our international transactions to our turnover was 35.5 percent. We achieved an impressive 2.4 times increase in our profit before tax.

We consider that geopolitical risks and uncertainty regarding the price stability will play an important role in the picture that awaits us next year. However, there is a crystal clear certainty on the other side of that uncertainty: The world that has changed with the pandemic will never be the same as before. The digitalization spearheads this transformation. Keeping in mind that digitalization, which brings new tools, priorities, policies and structures to the financial industry, is no longer a competitive edge, but one of the basic elements of competitiveness. We are constantly renewing our technological infrastructure with our competent staff and are determined to be one of the leaders in the industry in this field.
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In 2022, we will accelerate our digital finance investments, which we started earlier. We will continue to be the pioneering, innovative, and entrepreneurial financial institution of our country with strong capital, technological infrastructure, competent human resources, and an innovative and visionary management approach by preserving our traditional core values.
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Kind regards,