Esteemed Shareholders,
The world economy has been struggling through hard times since the last quarter of 2008. We've witnessed the whole world, particularly the international banking industry, suffer deeply from the crisis that broke out in the finance markets of the developed countries and spread quickly to other industries and countries.
It's not possible, of course, to say that Turkey was not impacted at all by the crisis that wrought great havoc in the finance markets on a global scale. 2009 was a year that saw the Turkish economy feel the adverse effects of these occurrences along with the world economy. Fortunately, the improvements in the last quarter of the year and the robust composition of the Turkish finance industry enabled Turkey to maintain its firm stand better than most other countries.
During this crisis, the Turkish banking industry reaped the fruits of the arrangements made after 2001. With the prudent policies they pursued, the banks displayed a performance that inspired confidence and contributed to stability. The profit figures disclosed by the banking industry attained successful levels despite a shrinking trend in the economy. The major reason for the success in profitability was the latter's being affected positively by the deposit interest margins due to the cuts in the rates of interest.
The banking industry's total assets climbed to TL 834 billion as of EOY 2009, representing a 13.9% increase with respect to EOY 2008. The industry's net profit for the term was TL 20.2 billion as of EOY 2009, corresponding to a year-on-year growth of TL 6.8 billion. The industry's equity rose by 28.3% from TL 86.4 billion as of EOY 2008 to TL 110.9 billion as of EOY 2009 while the ratio of equity to total assets grew to 13.3%.
Coming out unscathed and successfully from the global crisis that deepened in 2009, our bank continued its customer-centric operations during the year in order to promote its assets items, managing to step among the banks providing benefit to the non-financial sector with loans/assets ratio of 65% - higher than the industry average - as of year's end. Continuing to expand its volume of deposits in a balanced manner, Finansbank attained the level of TL 18,768 million in its total deposits. Our total equity grew by 28% to TL 3,627 million while our capital adequacy ratio was 17.99% at the end of 2009. Our net revenues from interest climbed by 31% to TL 2,236 million while our net revenues from fees and commissions rose to TL 577 million. Our total assets grew by 10% to TL 29,318 million by the end of the year.
Finasbank's net term profit increased by 79% year-on-year to reach TL 650 million in 2009. The net term profit in 2009 amounted to TL 463 million with a 28% increase - excluding the profit from the sale of subsidiaries during the term.
Boasting young, dynamic, and qualified human resources, Finansbank continued generating employment and expanding its branch network in 2009. We added new colleagues to our staff throughout the year. We tried to find solutions to all kinds of requirements of our customers by providing the highest quality and fastest service with our more than 10,000 employees and our 461 branches.
The direction the world is taking and the social/economic structures it gives rise to today necessitate new entities which, in turn, create an environment that requires new approaches and new ways of doing business. For our part, we went on developing innovative products that brought maximum benefit to our customers and diversifying our products and services.
In a move that was the first of its kind in the world, we offered our customers the option of dividing the payments for their purchases into installments when using their bank card. We took a major step towards popularizing the use of bank cards with the installment feature we added to our CardFinans Nakit card.
We developed brand new investment products under our concept of Today's Investment Instruments with a view to the changing financial needs of our times for the benefit of our customers who sought alternatives to the conventional means of investment.
According to the 3rd quarter data published by the Banks Union of Turkey, we climbed from 3rd place to 2nd among private banks in terms of the volume of housing loans and from 4th place to 3rd in the overall ranking. We became the bank that extended the most housing loans per branch among the top ten banks by assets size. In achieving these successes, we enabled consumers to become homeowners while stimulating the demand for housing, making a significant contribution to the non-financial sector in the process. We opened our new data center fitted out with the latest technology in order to provide fast and reliable service to our customers. A network of our bank and its 253 external connections with various institutions, this management hub for the entire communication earthquake-resistant facility is one of the leading data centers in Europe and the Middle East.
Driven by our conviction that the most measurable contribution is that which comes from taking concrete steps for the future, we carried on with our environmental and educational projects without interruption in 2009. Setting out from the premise that greater knowledge and moderation needs to be exercised in the consumption of our natural resources, we signed our name under a new campaign intended to support a change in the consumption habits of our employees and to urge them to use natural resources more efficiently. With the Billinçliyim (My ResponsiBILLity) campaign, we aimed to have each and every member of the Finansbank family cut down on the amount of power and water used in their home. In the domain of education, we continued our Full Educational Scholarship project conducted jointly with the Turkish Education Association (TED), one of the oldest educational organizations in Turkey, in which we lend our support to our children who will steer Turkey into the future.
We at Finansbank draw our strength from the meticulous attention and support that our customers, shareholders, and more than 10,000 employees afford to all of our work processes. Standing out among the leading institutions in Turkey's finance sector, our bank will keep working to remain an organization where the customers get better service than they expect, the shareholders are happy to partner with, and the employees are proud to work for.
I give my heartfelt thanks to all our staff, our customers, our strategic business partners, and our correspondent banks for their contribution to our success.
Sinan Şahinbaş
General Manager