Ayhan Sincek, General Manager of Katılım Emeklilik, announced that Katılım Emeklilik incorporated 400 thousand participants into BES Individual Pension System with the support of OKS Auto-Enrollment System. Sincek underlined that OKS was a good opportunity to extend the scope of BES and said: “We need to tell people that BES is the best available system to save with small investments. The system aims to encompass all our citizens. It is a transparent system with small deductions. BES is a professional investment tool where our citizens can deposit their savings with a state support of 25%; while the contribution of savings invested in gold, foreign exchange or funds that have tools like lease certificates or stocks is around 10%.”

Creating an awareness for saving is a national matter

Stating that the system brings great benefits and simplicity for the participants, Ayhan Sincek said: Financial literacy is important while building up savings. We need to teach people that they can do it with small amounts of savings, and by focusing on the right point and avoiding the impacts of inflation. We consider the creation of an awareness about the importance of savings is a matter of national importance.”

Sincek said that young people and employees with lower incomes are more inclined to stay in the system, and underlined that it was possible to ensure that young people stay longer if they received better information.

Stating that Katılım Emeklilik has incorporated more than 200 thousand participants into the system since the initiation of Auto Enrollment in the beginning of 2017, Sincek said: “We have helped 313 institutions join the Individual Pension System, including public ones, and incorporated more than 200 thousand participants in the system.”
Sincek said that Katılım Emeklilik has reached a fund size of 800 million TL in BES and Auto-Enrollment System in 3 years after its foundation, and added: “Katılım Emeklilik has enlarged the market along with its own growth. We are getting ready to reinforce our distribution channel with agents in the near future; and expand the scope of our services by offering health insurance and new products specially designed for SMEs.

3rd Phase of OKS initiated 

Ayhan Sincek also shared information on the 3rd phase of OKS: “Employees working at private companies, public institutions and social security institutions with 250 to 1000 employees joined the system as of 1 April 2017, and employees working at companies with 1 to 249 employees joined as of 1 July 2017. Katılım Emeklilik began to offer Corporate Internet Branch services for companies who prefer to work with us to make sure that they conduct their auto enrollment operations rapidly, easily and seamlessly. Moreover, we have created a special team and a special new call center line for auto enrollment. Company representatives can also reach our dedicated representatives instantly and conduct all kinds of transactions easily. Along with this process, we have improved our SMS notifications, transaction processing and automatic transaction infrastructure of our call center to offer simplicity for all our customers.”

All our BES participants are already able to use our internet branch and monitor their savings on a daily basis, request fund changes or changes in the amount of their contributions. Plus, they can also do all these transactions using our Katılım Mobile Application. Participants who have joined the system via auto enrollment can benefit from the same tools and facilities.”