How Isbank is reinventing itself with a new lifestyle space

While the Isbank brand is primarily known for its banking activities, it extends far beyond banking. Hence the idea of designing new spaces, open to all, where carrying out banking transactions is just one of the many services on offer. Yasemin Aykaç, New Generation Working Model Tribe Leader at Isbank, tells Qorus more about this new kind of place.


How would you define the İş Mekan space and what were your inspirations to imagine this space?

For the last decade, customer habits have been changing constantly, and in the finance industry the usage of digital banking has been increasing rapidly due to many reasons. With the help of quick and easy digital processes provided within all those mobile apps and websites, we all can transfer some money to our family with just one click without any need of going to a physical branch of a bank. Moreover, with the global pandemic of Covid-19, we were pushed to use these digital channels for everything in our life from banking to communicating with our loved ones. 

So, after analyzing this change and experiencing it first-hand ourselves as well, we wanted to join this change as Isbank Group. We decided to create a new generation space where we can touch most, if not all, of the needs of our customers and provide a unique and collective experience, while focusing on the neighborhood and its community it’ll be built in. In this project, we have created an ecosystem where banking transactions can be made while brands and platforms under the Isbank Group can provide different types of service. Its design has been prepared in a setting that focuses on meeting the needs of working, socializing, shopping and finding different experiences by prioritizing the expectations in daily life. With this goal in our heads, we have created a concept of space inspired by people and built the first one in Nisantasi, Istanbul. Our first Is Mekan, designed and created firstly to meet the needs of its neighborhood and community. 

İş Mekan is also an app. What can we do with this app?

One of the main reasons that this project came alive is the need and desire to build a connection between the digital and physical touch we share with our customers. So, to complete the communication with the customers and support the processes in the physical space, we also launched a mobile app for Is Mekan with the same name. Our visitors can make a reservation for the private meeting rooms of their choice, learn about the variety of events that will happen at the space and buy or reserve tickets for them. Our team continues to work on it to make it better and to enrich its functions with the feedback received from visitors and users.

Is İş Mekan a unique project or do you plan to build more spaces like that in the future? How do you see this happening?

Is Mekan is a unique project of its own. But we want to open up a few more spaces around the country in the near future with different concepts. Every city, every neighborhood has its own characteristics and needs and also its own unique community. So every Is Mekan branch we build will be different from the others. They’ll all focus on the needs and wants of that specific area and the community that they are built in.

This role of the bank that goes beyond banking services is becoming more widespread. How would you define İşbank if it's not just a bank anymore?

Isbank was actually never just a bank. It’s a big group of companies that serve in different types of industries. The banking industry is the main and first function of it, but over the years we have widened our service scope to insurance, retirement planning and wealth management, publications, bookstores, art and so on. With all these types of expertise in our hands, we decided to put them all together and create this one big collective space so that we can provide all these services in one place.