Ethics is an entire body of principles and measures, which investigates the values, norms and rules that govern the individual and social relations of the humans, from a moral view point which is essentially based on the parameters of right-and-wrong, good-and-bad, etc. professional ethics regulates the relations between the individual members of a profession and the relations of these members with the rest of the society, while ethics identifies a corporate behaviour culture by introducing certain rules in dealing with the problems stemming from inside or outside the organization.
The fact that banks, as organizations which fulfill investment and saving functions by playing an integrating and intermediary role between the fund-supplying and fund-demanding parties of the society, have also adopted profitability and productivity principles, obliges them to stick ethical principles during their operations in both professional and corporate domains.
General Provisions
Banks are required to stick to the below-specified general principles in their operations for the purpose of ensuring an efficient operation of the deposit and credit systems, preventing the procedures and applications which may cause considerable loss and damage to the economy, serving to the best interests of the public and protecting the environment, as well as in consideration of the professional obligations of the banks such as protecting the rights and interests of the savers maintaining trust and stability in financial markets, and the requirements of economic development of the country.
Honesty
Banks, during their operations, stick to the honesty principles in their relations with their customers, employees, shareholders, group companies and with other banks, organizations and companies.
Impartiality
Motivated by the motto of “At the heart of the success should lie respect to humans”, banks should make no discrimination and should avoid all forms of bias in their attitudes towards their employees as well as to their customers.
Banks should not make any discrimination towards their customers based on their nationality, religion, financial and social standing, and gender during their service.
Reliability
Banks should offer clear, comprehensible and correct information to their customers within the principles of reciprocal trust during their entire services and transactions; and they should provide the customer services in a timely and complete manner.
Transparency
Banks should inform their customers in an open, easily understandable and clear way regarding the underlying rights and responsibilities, benefits and risks attached to the products and services offered to them.
Observing Social Benefit and Respect to Environment
Banks should show the due diligence to support all kinds of social and cultural activities in the light of the principle of observing, aside from the profitability, the social benefit and respect to the environment.
Fighting with Laundering of Crime-Originated Assets
They should adopt the fight against corruption, laundering of crime-originated assets, etc. as a significant principle as stipulated by international norms and the provisions of national laws and regulations, and do their utmost fir the due cooperation with each other, with other organizations and institutions related with the subject, as well as with the competent authorities. They should also assume the required measures inside their organizations for this purpose, and device training programs to instruct their personnel on the matter.
Relations of Banks with Their Customers
Banks should observe the following principles in their relations with their customers.
Informing the Customers
Banks provide accurate, complete and timely information to their customers regarding all kinds of products and services they offer to them in all phases of such service relationship and on all subjects by also complying with the limitations stipulated under the laws and regulations.
Secrets of Customers
Banks are obliged to keep confidential and maintain with due diligence all customer information and documents, and not to show such information and documents to persons other than the persons and authorities who are explicitly authorized to request to see them under laws.
Service Quality
Banks should assume the service quality as a precondition of meeting the requirements and expectations of their customers. They should do their utmost for the employment of the two fundamentals elements of this concept of service quality, the technological infrastructure and qualified human resources, in a way to lead to a continuous improvement and betterment of the service quality.
Banks should offer the same quality and the same level of service to all their customers. However, differentiating the organizational structure and product range in accordance with an identified target market, or adopting different approaches to the customers in different risk groups cannot be interpreted as discrimination or categorization of the customers.
Customer Complaints
Banks should establish a system in order to respond all and any kinds of questions of their customers stemming from the services offered, and should accordingly inform their customers about this system.
They should investigate the causes for the customer’s complaints, and implement the measures required for preventing fair complaints from repeating. They instruct their employees for the correction and non-repetition of the complained, wrong practices.
