İşbank Deputy CEO Sezgin Lüle explains how the Turkish bank, which recently celebrated its centenary, is gearing up for the future of banking.
Global Finance: What are İşbank’s goals and aspirations for the next century?
Sezgin Lüle: Being awarded the Global Best Consumer Mobile Banking App for the second time in a row has been an immensely proud moment for us, especially in the year we are celebrating our centenary.
Our İşCep mobile banking app has reached 17 million users, and seven million of them use it on a regular basis. Those seven million use it more than 25 million times to make investments, check their finances, and use other functionalities. It has been a remarkable success in terms of digital onboarding, as well. We enjoy a 70% onboarding ratio on overall customer acquisition. Over 80% of transactions go through the mobile app. This shows how İşCep has become the center of customers’ lives.
This year, we also introduced the super app function—covering all those verticals that are not really banking services, such as your car, home, family, travel, and e-commerce spending. These provide additional client engagements. You can book a flight or a motel. You can get insurance if you are traveling overseas or know the current asset value of your car and receive offers to replace it if you want.
As we begin our second century, we have a strong vision regarding digital banking. Our strategy is to position our mobile app as a smart tool, giving insights based on AI analytics, to be hyperpersonalized, convenient, and innovative; where landing pages reflect your personal usage. If you spend most of your time making investments, this is what your landing page will show. And the more functionality you use, it will automatically be offered on the landing page as well.
GF: How do you envision the future of banking, and what role will banks play in shaping it?
Lüle: There are three tiers that banks will follow. The first one, and the most lucrative, is the battle for the affluent segment of society. It is going to be mobile-first, and banks with the most capabilities and the most experience with relationship management will battle to own the primacy of the wealth management segment.
The second thing is what banks are going to do when their margins are under pressure. With interest rates dropping across Europe, the US, and here in Turkey, it is going to put pressure on margins, so banks need to manage their operating expenditures.
The cost to serve is going to become more important, and the mass consumer segment will increasingly be served by mobile capabilities rather than in-person tellers.
The third part is embedded finance, which is just open banking. With the rise of banking-as-a service capabilities [BaaS], banks can start to leave the front end to digital platforms, as they become more like commodities to settle cash loans, overdrafts and current accounts. The full customer experience will be owned by a digital platform. But there is a new revenue pool that is emerging because of API-based digital platforms, and we are heading toward marketplaces.
GF: Why has İşbank launched other apps in addition to your superapp İşCep?
Lüle: We introduced a new app with a new brand for experimentation—to really understand whether the youth segment really cares about banks. While İşbank, the brand, is known as a trustworthy bank, does this really matter to Gen Z, which might just bank with digital or social media platforms? We have called it Nays, and it is powered by İşbank to target young people. In the past two years, we have managed to onboard more than four million customers—all of them are young, and new to İşbank. We may be 100 years old, but we are not going to stand still. We need to stay relevant in our second century. In the future, we need to explore new ways of handling customer requests.
