Akbank CIO Gökhan Gökçay: “At Akbank Technology, we operate like a technology production factory with high volume output. We implement over 10,000 changes per month and complete more than 500 projects annually.”
An experienced technology leader, Gökhan Gökçay is known for creating dynamic and competent engineering teams, modernizing engineering practices, and developing cloud-based, scalable, data-driven platforms and digital solutions. He has a transformational and collaborative approach with a strong focus on business strategies. Gökçay holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Boğaziçi University. He began his career as a software engineer in 1992 and has held partner and department head positions at leading banks and consulting firms in Turkey and Europe. He joined Akbank in 2017 as the Head of Digital Banking, Payment Systems, and Data.
Since January 2023, Gökhan Gökçay has been serving as Akbank’s Executive Vice President (CIO) responsible for technology. He explains his perspective on the digital age and strategic approach by quoting American futurist Alvin Toffler: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot unlearn and relearn.” He adds, “This shows that being prepared for inevitable change requires breaking free from your routines.”
Emphasizing the importance of adopting innovative and modern approaches in every area to perfect the service experience and achieve sustainable success, we had the opportunity to speak with Gökhan Gökçay about being agile, productive, and resilient in a rapidly evolving world, while also hearing about Akbank Technology’s pioneering initiatives.
How do you evaluate the developments in banking and technology? We would like to hear your views on the impact of technology trends on banking?
The transition of banking transactions to digital interaction channels and automation has largely been completed. The current digital transformation process aims not only to equip existing products and flows with digital capabilities that add value but also to develop brand-new digital products and services.
Customers are no longer driven solely by price or brand concerns; they prefer financial service providers that meet their unique needs and offer value beyond traditional banking products.
In recent years, significant technological advancements have occurred. With advanced telecommunications capabilities, we have entered the era of real-time communication. Mobile smart devices have completely transformed users’ life experiences. Cloud technology solutions have provided significant gains in terms of scalability and adaptability to change. Artificial intelligence technologies have reached a unique point in enhancing experiences and delivering personalized services.
In addition, in the field of financial technologies, not only banks but also global technology firms known as ‘bigtechs,’ other sector players such as telecommunications and retail companies, e-money companies, fintechs, and banks that serve their customers exclusively through digital channels without branches have joined the competition. This increased competition has accelerated developments in the field of innovation.
All these factors push us to go beyond just using technological capabilities to improve the banking experience; they encourage us to focus on developing processes, products, and solutions that enhance our customers’ overall life experience.
Our customers use our banking APIs in various service areas more than 500 million times a month.
Where Does Akbank Stand in This Large Digital Ecosystem? We Know Akbank Has a Strong Ambition in Digital. Could You Provide Examples of This Ambition and Success?
Today, 96% of transactions conducted with our bank, including information services, take place through digital interaction channels. In the last two years, our active customer base has increased by 55%, and our digital customer base has grown by 68%. This shows that we have a higher momentum in growth within digital environments.
Of the 4.6 million net customers we gained in 2022 and 2023, 4 million became Akbank customers through digital acquisition. 90% of our consumer loan sales are conducted through our digital channels. Out of our more than 11 million digitally active customers, each customer, on average, logs into our mobile applications 35 times a month. On busy days, our customers interact with our mobile applications 700 million times a day.
We achieved this digital strength by providing our customers with a good experience through customer-centric, digital, and innovative products and services.
We have launched solutions that offer added value and experiences in various fields through key channels such as Akbank Mobile, Juzdan, Investor Mobile, Assistant, and Tosla, which was created by our subsidiary Aköde.
We introduced Turkey’s first digital card, the first over-the-limit mobile POS, and the first digital cash register to Akbank customers. Using the latest technology, we have developed many products such as the first cross-border money transfer with blockchain technology via web 3.0 and the first foreign trade solution.
In service banking, we have nearly 700 APIs covering everything from cash management to credit, deposit management to investment services. A wide range of our customers, from e-money institutions to e-commerce companies, use our banking APIs in different service areas more than 500 million times a month.
All of this is made possible by using the areas where technology creates opportunities at the right time and in the right way.
Behind Akbank’s Digital Strength, There Is Undoubtedly Its Technological Capabilities. Could You Describe Akbank Technology in More Detail?
Akbank Technology consists of over 2,400 technology professionals and more than 240 agile teams, including 1,600 Akbank employees and talents from our long-term application development service partners. With this technology team, we manage a technology ecosystem that serves over 700 branches, 5,800 ATMs, 770,000 POS devices, more than 12,000 bank employees, hundreds of technology partners, and 13 million active customers. Our competent team, with an average of 8.5 years of industry experience, operates remotely and flexibly from 49 provinces across Turkey.
We operate like a technology production factory with high volume output. We implement over 10,000 changes per month and complete more than 500 projects annually.
We are passionate about using technology in the best way possible while offering innovative and value-adding products to our customers. For this, we invest over $200 million annually in the future of banking.
What Are Akbank Technology’s Strategies and Goals?
With our vision to be a leading bank and pioneering technology force that carries Turkey into the future, we are enthusiastically carrying out our work. To adapt quickly to the rapid developments in our industry and technology, we focus on being agile; to sustain our momentum in digitalization and innovation, we emphasize being productive and efficient.
In the last two years, we transitioned from a competency-based technology organization to a product/service-based organization. Throughout our development lifecycle, in the steps we define as Engineering Practices—from demand to production and competency enhancement—we work with the principle of applying the best practices. We leverage the power of AI and automation in our processes such as development, testing, and code review. We were among the first in our sector to introduce Site Reliability Engineering (Service Management) practices to strengthen our resilience and oversight capabilities. In parallel with this, we are moving towards a cloud-based architecture. Despite a 2.5-fold increase in transaction volume over the past two years, we have seen our average response times in digital channels cut in half.
We are always focused on research and innovation to respond to the changing needs of our customers. We see significant value potential in artificial intelligence technologies for improving the customer experience, increasing efficiency in our bank processes, and generating value on reduced data.
We have numerous AI applications and generative AI solutions that we use in our bank processes and customer services.
- Akbank Assistant, which has both written and voice-based communication capabilities and is developed with natural language processing and understanding technologies, has become a rising interaction point for our customers today; it understands over 1,000 banking transactions and can perform most of them automatically.
- Our Smart Tips solution, developed to enhance our customers’ financial awareness and make their lives easier with personalized insights, has received many positive comments from our customers and proven itself with the awards it has received.
- With our “Smart Help Assistant,” which we developed in recent months and define as the co-pilot of banking, our employees can work more quickly and easily and receive effective assistance for their support needs.
- In recent weeks, we combined our banking experience and expertise in artificial intelligence technologies to develop a large language model specializing in banking processes and terms. Initially, our model, trained with 56 billion parameters and 100,000 example instructions specific to banking processes, has been used to understand, interpret, and implement documents and instructions received by our bank through correspondence. Tests showed a 35% increase in accuracy compared to traditional natural language processing solutions.
We believe in the importance of creating an ecosystem to ensure that our customers’ needs are met easily and in their current channel when needed, and in designing an integrated service experience for our customers. In addition to the hundreds of APIs and service integrations we have developed in this context, we also carry out many collaborations for more innovative experiences. For example, our initiatives in innovative areas, such as payment integrations with smartwatches, the use of small household appliances through our mobile app, and the publication of Akbank Mobile on the Trumore digital platform, serve our goal of growing with the ecosystem. Our focus in this area will continue, and we will rapidly advance our innovative ecosystem efforts.
