SADEK Environmental and Social Risk Assessment Model Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2025

Within the scope of Pandemic Support Loan (SADEK) agreement amounting USD 250 million signed in 2020 between our Bank and the World Bank to support SMEs, commercial, retail, and corporate clients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the project-specific environmental and social risk assessment process has been fully conducted by the Environmental and Social Impact Analysis Department since September 2023. Prior to September 2023 which is the initial phase of the environmental and social risk assessment process, the evaluation was conducted in collaboration with an external consultancy firm due to the recent establishment of our department and limited internal capacity at that time. During this period, clients were assessed using a standardized set of 40 questions, which is also utilized in our department’s other evaluation frameworks. However, carrying out the said evaluation through a consultancy firm has brought with it various structural and operational negativities. The consultancy fees placed an additional burden on the corporate budget, while the high volume of email correspondence and coordination required with clients caused significant delays in the loan extension process. Furthermore, the excessive number of documents requested from the clients during the assessment created a substantial administrative workload for both the clients and the Bank. This situation has led some clients to give up on completing the process and utilizing the World Bank financing. These factors negatively impacted overall satisfaction with the service and also created a need for additional digital storage capacity at the institutional level due to the manual archiving of the documents. Action plans were prepared for the issues determined as a result of the environmental and social assessments and a certain period of time was given to the clients to complete the necessary actions after the utilization of the loan. However, in the post loan utilization period, the motivation of the clients to carry out the actions on time decreased. It caused the action completion periods to be exceeded thus increasing the workload of our department and making it difficult to follow the process. As of September 2023, a revised environmental and social risk assessment process was introduced by our department for the companies located in earthquake-affected regions, which experienced the most difficulties in obtaining information and documents related to the environmental and social assessment process and also had urgent financing needs. In this updated process, the number of questions and documentation requirements were reduced while the assessment continued to be conducted manually. The clarity of the revised rules and the streamlined questionnaire significantly accelerated Bank’s branch staff’s adaptation to the process. This situation accelerated the loan disbursements within the scope of the World Bank SADEK Project and enabled the project to gain serious momentum. For the remaining allocation of the SADEK program, based on the experience gained from previous assessment processes, our department developed an environmental and social risk assessment model incorporating a tailored questionnaire built on clients’ NACE codes and hazard classifications. As of April 2025, this model has been fully integrated into the Bank’s IT infrastructure. With the implementation of this newly developed model, the collaboration with external consultants has been terminated and the process is now fully managed using the Department’s internal capacity. As a result, the average duration of environmental and social risk assessments, previously around 15 days, has been reduced to approximately one hour, thanks to end-to-end execution via the Bank’s digital infrastructure. This transformation has significantly accelerated the evaluation process and improved operational efficiency. Leveraging the Bank’s IT infrastructure for end-to-end assessments has not only streamlined the process but also enhanced the overall customer experience, facilitating faster loan disbursements under the SADEK framework. Additionally, the model helped promote broader adoption of sustainable finance practices within the real sector. Furthermore, the elimination of consultancy-related costs and the internalization of assessment fees as Bank revenue have had a positive impact on the financial profitability. As a result of the assessments carried out by our department, approximately TRY 2 million in profit was generated for the Bank within a short period of just one and a half months. According to projections, by the end of 2025, upon completion of the Project, the total profit generated through the environmental and social risk assessment model developed by our Department is expected to reach TRY 7 million.