FINANCE FOR ALL ? - Frankfurt School of Finance & Management

anderen Bank vermacht haben: der staatlichen
Ziraat Bank. Sie wurde 1840 gegründet
und ist mit 1.300 Filialen und einem
Marktanteil von 70 Prozent klarer Marktführer
im Agrilending. Studien belegen,
dass die Bauern Ziraat stärker vertrauen als
den Privatbanken. 60 Prozent von ihnen
haben einen Ziraat-Kredit, auch Satu, seit
Jahren schon zahlt er ihn ab. Und seinen
Hof hat er im Gegenzug dafür verpfändet.
Die wenigsten Landwirte
sind wettbewerbsfähig.
„Dabei brauchen die Landwirte eher
eine kurzfristige Umlaufmittelfinanzierung
als langfristige Kredite“, sagt Gökhan Erel
im 22. Stock der Yapi Kredi-Zentrale in Levante,
Istanbuls Bankenviertel. Durch sein
Fenster sind die Türme der großen Investmentbanken
zu sehen. Merrill Lynch, UBS,
JP Morgan oder die Deutsche Bank haben
hier ihre türkischen Außenposten errichtet.
Erel ist für das Marketing im Geschäft
mit kleinen und mittelgroßen Firmen verantwortlich.
Yapi Kredi ist die fünftgrößte
Bank der Türkei, gehört je zur Hälfte der
italienischen Unicredit und der türkischen
Koc-Gruppe, 5,4 Millionen Privatkunden,
darunter 532.000 kleine und mittelständische
Firmen. Und nun auch 100.000 Bauern.
„Bis Ende des Jahres 2012 sollen es
133.000 sein. Wir sind die Nummer drei im
Markt“, sagt der Banker.
Satu war einer der ersten Kunden von
Yapi Kredi. Er kann sich an die Zeiten erinnern,
als die Landwirtschaft noch mehr
als ein Viertel des türkischen BIP ausmachte
(2010: nur noch 8,8 Prozent) und das
ehemals klassische Agrarland noch kein
Getreide importieren musste. Im Gegensatz
zu den meisten der drei Millionen
türkischen Bauern kann Satu auf seinen
38 Hektar einigermaßen vernünftig wirtschaften.
Er musste sich den elterlichen
Hof nicht mit anderen Erben teilen. 80
Prozent der Bauern im Land müssen mit
weniger als zehn Hektar auskommen, im
Schnitt mit sechs. „Die Anbauflächen werden
immer kleiner“, sagt Harald von Witzke,
Agrarökonom vom Humboldt Forum
for Food and Agriculture. Die Landwirtschaft
sei vielerorts unproduktiv, die wenigsten
Bauern seien wettbewerbsfähig.
banking products and services for farmers
in emerging and developing economies:
“We developed a similar programme for
cotton farmers in Tajikistan,” he explains.
Ultimately, of course, the scoring software
is supposed to determine whether or
not Satu is creditworthy. “Until now, a tool
for assessing loans to smallholders didn’t
exist,” explains Felske. The loan officer in
Bafra had to rely on gut instinct, and on
the figures provided by Satu: he sells his
crop for 200,000 Turkish lira with production
costs of around 150,000 lira – always
provided he doesn’t sow too late and the
weather and global market prices play
along.
“The reason risk analysis is so complicated
for the banks is because, unlike the
crafts sector, farmers don’t have a steady
stream of income that would allow them
to repay their loans in monthly instalments,”
says Felske. Especially as most
Turkish farmers have already signed over
their most valuable security – their farms –
to another bank: state-owned Ziraat Bank.
The latter, founded in 1840, has 1,300
branches and a 70% market share, thus
leads the market in the agrilending sector.
Studies show that farmers trust Ziraat
more than they do private banks: 60% of
them have Ziraat loans. So does Satu: he’s
been repaying it for years. And he mortgaged
his farm as collateral.
Only a very few farmers
are competitive.
“Farmers actually need short-term
working capital more than they need
long-term loans,” comments Gökhan Erel.
From the window of his office on the 22nd
floor of Yapi Kredi’s headquarters in Levent,
Istanbul’s financial district, you can
see the skyscrapers of the major investment
banks: Merrill Lynch, UBS, JP Morgan
and Deutsche Bank have all set up
Turkish outposts here. Erel is responsible
for the marketing side of the bank’s SME
business. Yapi Kredi is Turkey’s fifth largest
bank, owned 50-50 by Italy’s Unicredit
and the Turkish Koc Group. As at September
2011, the bank had total assets valued
at 57 billion dollars and 5.4 million retail
clients, among them 532,000 SMEs and
now 100,000 farmers, too. “By the end of
2012 we’re expecting this figure to rise to
133,000. We’re number three in the marketplace,”
adds the banker.
Satu was one of Yapi Kredi’s first clients.
He can remember a time when agriculture
still accounted for rather more
than a quarter of Turkey’s GDP (by 2010
it had shrunk to just 8.8%). In those days,
the country still had an agricultural tradition
and no need to import grain. Unlike
most of Turkey’s three million farmers,
Satu can manage reasonably well on
his 38 hectares – he didn’t have to share
his parents’ farm with other heirs. 80%
of the country’s farmers have to make do
with less than 10 hectares – just six, on average.
“Arable land is shrinking,” asserts
Harald von Witzke, an agricultural economist
at the Humboldt Forum for Food and
Agriculture in Berlin. He adds that in many
parts of the country, farming is very unproductive,
meaning that only a very few
farmers remain competitive.
From a banking perspective, these tiny
smallholdings are the main problem. Because
the average loan comes to little
more than 15,000 Turkish lira (ca. 6,200
euros), the banks are obliged to treat the
sector as a mass market, explains Yapi
Kredi manager Erel. “That’s why we use
databases in an effort to take a systematic
approach to risk management,” he adds.
That’s why Yapi Kredi consulted Frankfurt
School’s IAS unit, which hired seven
agronomists to work on the new scoring
model. They entered data for 96% of all
Turkish farmers into the database, covering
every single village. They also assessed
prices and production costs for the many
varieties of fruits, vegetables and cereals
grown by the farmers – it took them five
months.
None of this benefits Satu directly: being
a farmer, he will always be dependent on
the vagaries of Nature. He doesn’t know
when the rain will fall, whether the harvest
will be good or bad, whether he’ll be able
to sell his 200 tonnes of rice. But Erel confirms
that the default fate for agricultural
loans is actually slightly lower than for
small business loans: they represent good
business for his bank. Turkish banks cur-
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