Improving Financial Literacy

Our Community Investments

At ING, we work for a world without the threat of climate crisis, with good working and employment conditions and ultimately, for people with good financial health and prosperous societies that respect basic human rights.

With the aim of contributing to the solution of vital challenges exacerbated by current social and economic impacts and transforming the philosophy at the center of our brand, 'do your thing', into a social promise, we make community investments. We thus create equal opportunities to build an inclusive economy and participatory communities by increasing the impact and power of all our activities. 

With our community investment programs, we aim to improve the financial health and social conditions of 3 million people by 2025, to help them access employment and improve their financial means and contribute to social prosperity through the support we provide to social initiatives.  We are committed to carrying out our work in three main areas: 

• Improving financial capabilities: We are working to help 1.5 million people overcome problematic debts and financial difficulties and gain financial strength.
• A workforce that is ready for the future: Working to develop new skills and increase employment. We are committed to supporting the creation of employment that is not affected by future changes by developing the digital skills of 500,000 people and empowering them through employment.
• Community initiatives: We create local projects and initiatives or support existing initiatives to empower 1 million people through innovative solutions developed through such initiatives.

At ING Group, we believe that our community investments play a role in ensuring that everyone has an equal opportunity to protect our planet and pursue what they value in life by increasing access to green and sustainable solutions, technologies, and skills. We thus support initiatives and opinion leaders that help people achieve a better tomorrow and create a positive change in their businesses or communities. At the same time, we are strengthening the impact of our community investments every day by actively involving our employees and customers in them.


Improving Financial Literacy

Our social investment projects that we have realized as ING Türkiye;

Orange Drop

At ING Türkiye, we have been providing financial literacy education to 3rd and 4th grade students in state primary schools for 8 weeks since 2013, as a token of the value we give to future generations. 

With our Orange Drop initiative, which is the first and only financial literacy education for primary school students in Türkiye, we aim to create a sense of saving in children at an early age and introduce a behavioral change.

By adopting a multi-stakeholder cooperation model that includes the private sector, universities, the public sector, and civil society, we provide development opportunities to students through their class teachers in their own educational environments through the Orange Drop. We measure the impact of the training with academia-supported analyses. The impact measurement results of the Orange Drop training show that the education completely eliminated the 'gender difference in competitive tendencies' observed in many developed and developing countries in the world, including Türkiye, and that the competitiveness of our girls who received the education reached the same level as that of the male students. 

The Orange Drop, which is represented on international platforms such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Children and Youth Finance International (CYFI); 

• was worthy of the Preferred Bank Awards organized in 40 countries where ING Group operates,
• won the Financial Literacy Excellence Award given by the American Financial Literacy Institute,
• was a finalist in the International Children and Youth Finance Awards,
• was selected as the Best Corporate Social Responsibility Project in the Education Category at the 13th Golden Compass Awards,
• won the Silver Award in the Corporate Social Responsibility Project of the Year category at the Stevie International Business Awards, 

For detailed information about the Orange Drop, you can visit our website and review the current Impact Assesment Report.

Türkiye’s Saving Tendencies Research 

We are conducting the Türkiye’s Savings Tendencies Research in collaboration with Ipsos since October 2011, aiming to determine the saving habits, changes, and possibilities of Türkiye's urban population. 

Within the scope of the research, we monitor monthly the saving habits, reasons, and most used saving tools of the "average individual" in Türkiye, as well as their individual incomes, monthly savings rate, and convertible savings amount in cash. Thus, we produce scientific data on savings with the aim to draw attention to low savings rates and fill the statistical data gap in this area.

We conduct our computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI) research with 800 people in 26 selected provinces representing Türkiye's urban population every month and share the results on our website in quarterly periods.