A quick look at the Turkish financial and banking sectors

Thanks to the regulatory reforms and structural reforms implemented by the government following the financial collapse of the country at the beginning of the 2000s, the Turkish financial sector survived the global financial chaos in 2009 with success. Moreover, the sector has been preferred among others by foreign investors attracting USD 48 billion during the past 14 years. Experts comment this may have been due to the increased investor confidence in the sector following serious reforms implemented by the authority.

When we look at the financial sector in general we see it is dominated by banking sector which accounts for approximately 60 percent of total financial services, followed by insurance services and other financial activities, all with noteworthy growth potential,

Currently, Turkey has 53 banks to include 34 deposit banks, 13 development and investment banks and 6 participation banks. It is important to note that foreign investors hold approx. 30% of total assets in the banking sector.

Moreover, the sector has a leading position in the world with a growing asset size and a strong capital structure to protect against shocks that may arise from lending or unexpected and unavoidable negative market fluctuations.

In general, it is observed that the sector reached an asset size of TL 3.6 trillion (US $ 1.2 trillion) in total with an annual compound annual growth rate of 18 percent between 2008 and 2015. On the other hand the banking sector the banking sector doubled its assets during this period, which went up to TL 2.4 trillion (US $ 807 billion) until the end of 2015.

As the current picture tells us, it seems that foreign investors will stick to their growing interest in the sector in the coming days as well.