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Message from the Chairman
Effective use was also made last year of CBRT-Turk Eximbank
rediscount credit while AFI members continued to take part in
Takasbank money market operations.
Tendering, technical testing, and similar stages were completed
last year in the “Supply-Chain Finance System” and “Private
Integrator” projects. Work on both projects’ infrastructure is
still in progress. The first of these projects keeps electronic-
format track of multiple suppliers’ and financial institutions’
successive approvals and makes the information accessible
through a web portal with a user-friendly interface. The other is
intended to help businesses adapt more quickly to the steadily
increasing presence of e‑invoices, e‑registers, and e‑archives in
commercial life. We expect that both these projects will be up
and running in 2017.
To increase both our depth and our contributions to the
national economy
One of AFI’s most important goals is to increase the depth of
our country’s factoring, financial leasing, and financing sectors
and to bring its non-bank financial institutions’ contributions
to economic growth to the level seen in other developing
countries.
In this, our aim as the non-bank financial institutions industry
in 2017 will be to reach out to more customers by increasing
the technology-intensive financial solutions that we can offer.
We believe that this is the way to reduce costs while also
increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction. In line with
this, we are continuing our efforts to expand and proliferate
our technology-intensive projects with no loss of momentum.
We also continue to work with all of our members in an
ongoing effort to achieve our long-term goals of deepening
their sectors and of supporting economic growth and
expansion. The companies that make up our Association work
together with about 750 thousand SMEs, to which they provide
high-value products, services, and solutions.
Under AFI’s duties in the SME Strategy and Action Plan, whose
underlying slogan is “Strong and Secure Tomorrows with SMEs”,
we travel around the country visiting such businesses and tell
them about the innovations and advantages that our members
can offer.
For this purpose, during 2016, AFI worked with the Ministry
of Science, Industry and Technology, the Banking Regulation
and Supervision Agency, the Turkish Exporters Assembly and
Turk Eximbank in the conduct of gatherings in the provinces
of Denizli, Bursa, Samsun, and Adana that sought to meet
with SMEs at many different locations and to explain to them
financing methods which could be of help to them.
We continue to focus on ways to promote sectoral
development.
The Central Invoice Recording System, a registry of information
about receivables which are assigned to factoring companies
and banks, became one of Turkey’s major data centers in 2016
when, with the inclusion of information about cheques, notes,
policies, and similar payment instruments as well as about their
collections, it also became possible to check invoicees’ payment
performance through the system as well.
The Contract Registration System, which serves as a central
database for financial leasing agreements, continued to be used
effectively and productively as a result of IT improvements that
were made in 2016.
Working closely
with nearly 750 thousand SMEs
The companies that make up our Association work
together with about 750 thousand SMEs, for which
they provide high-value products, services, and
solutions.
Increasing share
in economic growth
One of AFI’s most important goals is to bring
our country’s non-bank financial institutions’
contributions to economic growth to the level seen
in other developing countries.
Annual Report 2016
The Association of Financial Institutions
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