QNB Türkiye Brand Guidelines: Finansbank’s 1987 Start, a 2016 Purchase & the 2024 Rename

A banker’s own bank, opened in Gümüşsuyu in 1987.

QNB Türkiye began as Finansbank, founded in Istanbul on 26 October 1987 by the banker Hüsnü Özyeğin, Turkish Wikipedia says. Özyeğin had held senior posts at Pamukbank and Yapı Kredi before setting up a bank of his own, and its first branch opened in Istanbul’s Gümüşsuyu district. From its founding until April 2006 the bank sat inside his Fiba Holding group.

Finansbank went to the stock market early. Its shares were offered to the public on 3 February 1990 and traded on the Istanbul exchange under the code FINBN, according to Turkish Wikipedia. Specialist companies grew up around it: a leasing business from 1990, an investment house separated from the bank in 1996, an asset-management company from September 2000, a factoring company from October 2009, and the technology company IBTech, which has run the bank’s information systems since 2005.

The bank’s name later changed with its owners. In April 2006 Fiba Holding agreed to sell a controlling stake to the National Bank of Greece, which raised its holding through a tender offer in January 2007 and a further purchase from Özyeğin in August 2008, Turkish Wikipedia says. Özyeğin stayed on as chairman until April 2010. On 22 December 2015 the National Bank of Greece announced that it was selling the whole bank to Qatar National Bank, and the purchase of its 99.81 per cent stake was completed in June 2016.

Galaxy Card, CardFinans and a branchless bank.

Cards carried much of Finansbank’s retail identity. In 1999 it launched Galaxy Card, an instalment credit card that Turkish Wikipedia describes as offering discounts at many shops, starting with those in the Fiba group; in 2001 it added instalment deferral and air-mile campaigns. In December 2000 Galaxy Card was renamed CardFinans, a name that tied the card back to the bank. In 2010 the bank introduced FIX Card, presented as a credit card with no annual card fee.

The most distinctive name to come out of Finansbank was a digital one. In October 2012 it opened Enpara.com, which Turkish Wikipedia describes as the first service in the country to offer branchless internet banking beyond an ordinary online branch. It was given a name and look of its own, separate from the parent bank, and has its own guide in this series.

Under Qatari ownership the Finansbank name was kept for a time, joined to the new parent’s initials. On 20 October 2016 the bank became QNB Finansbank, and in February 2018 its stock code changed to QNBFB, Turkish Wikipedia says. Bloomberg HT, reporting in October 2024, also dated the purchase to June 2016 and the QNB Finansbank name to October 2016. For eight years the bank carried two names side by side: the group’s initials and the local name chosen in 1987. Its subsidiaries followed the same pattern, with names such as QNB Finansinvest, QNB Finansportföy and QNB Finansfaktoring. The pension company Finans Emeklilik, set up as a Finansbank subsidiary in July 2007, took a partner in July 2012, when Cigna bought 51 per cent of it and signed a 15-year exclusive distribution agreement with the bank, Turkish Wikipedia says.

How Turkish banks present themselves.

Turkish banks tend to present themselves through bold, simple wordmarks and one dominant colour. Across the country’s large lenders the palettes run through greens, reds, blues and purples, and the names keep their Turkish letters — the dotted capital İ, the ş, the ı and the ğ — on logos, apps and branch signs, so a typeface that handles those diacritics cleanly belongs in any design brief for the sector.

Advertising is a large part of how these brands are known at home. Mascots, recurring characters and campaigns led by well-known actors and athletes appear across the sector, alongside photography of branches, city streets and Istanbul itself. On their websites the banks arrange themselves around everyday tasks: accounts, loans, credit cards and loyalty programmes, and mobile apps that sit at the front of most pages.

Sponsorship and culture extend the identity. Turkish banks sponsor football, concerts and festivals, and some run publishers, galleries, museums or art collections under their own names; İşbank’s publishing house and painting collection, and the SALT institution that grew out of Garanti BBVA’s Ottoman Bank archive, are two documented examples covered in this series.

The banks also publish a great deal of formal material. Listed lenders produce annual and integrated reports, sustainability reports and investor presentations in Turkish and English. This series sets out what can be checked about each bank — when and where it was founded, who owns it and how its name has changed — and marks clearly what rests only on a bank’s own word.

One group name, in stages.

The double name ended in 2024. According to a stock-exchange disclosure reported by Bloomberg HT on 11 October 2024, an extraordinary general meeting on 1 October approved a new trade name, QNB Bank Anonim Şirketi, which was registered that day. Turkish Wikipedia dates the switch to the plain name QNB to 14 October 2024, and the share code changed to QNBTR on 1 November 2024. English Wikipedia’s page on QNB Group says the group phased out the Finansbank name in Turkey and the Al Ahli name in Egypt in the same year.

Haber 7 reported on 15 October 2024 that the change followed QNB Group’s aim of becoming an international brand under one integrated name, that the bank’s subsidiaries would also trade as QNB, and that its head office in Istanbul’s Kristal Kule tower had been redesigned to match the new brand and logo. The bank’s general manager said then that QNB operated in 28 countries on three continents and that Türkiye was the group’s largest investment. Bloomberg HT gave the bank 436 branches at 30 June 2024. In the Turkish business press the bank now appears as QNB Türkiye: Ekonomist used that name in October 2026 when reporting the nine-month results of Qatar National Bank’s Turkish subsidiary. In January 2025 the bank’s e-invoicing company also took a group-style name, QNB eSolutions, according to Turkish Wikipedia, which now lists the group companies as QNB Leasing, QNB Invest, QNB Portföy and QNB Faktoring, with the “Finans” element dropped from each, while the technology company IBTech keeps its own name.

For a design guide, QNB Türkiye shows how an acquired bank can move from a local name to a group name in stages: first a shared name, then the group’s initials alone. Compare its parent, QNB, and Enpara, the digital bank that started inside Finansbank. For this guide we use a deep plum, a muted rose, warm grey and off-white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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