Pioneers of Digital Finance 2023


The "KPMG & FINTR - Pioneers of Digital Finance" awards, organized by KPMG Turkey and the Financial Innovation and Technology Association (FINTR) to support Turkey's fintech ecosystem and strengthen its role in the region and the world in terms of finance and technology, met with their winners. The awards were presented to their winners at the ceremony held at the "Istanbul Fintech Week" event, the first and largest global financial technology event in Turkey, of which FINTR is the main supporter and KPMG is the sponsor.


The winners of the "KPMG & FINTR - Pioneers of Digital Finance" awards, which were given to 3 banks and 4 initiatives offering innovative products or services in the field of financial technologies in 7 categories, and the categories they won are as follows: In the Bank category; Türkiye İş Bankası was selected as the "Pioneer Bank", Yapı Kredi Bankası was selected as the "Visionary Bank" and Fibabank was selected as the "Most Open to Collaboration Bank". In the Fintech category, United Payment was selected as the "Global Pioneer Fintech"; Fimple was selected as “Emerging Fintech” and Agrio as “Innovative Fintech”, while Papara won the “Financial Inclusion” award. The winning fintechs will be given the opportunity to promote themselves at IFW and will also be supported in their crowdfunding efforts.





Our Jury Members

Prof. Dr. Ceylan Onay

Prof. Dr. Ceylan Onay Şahin is a faculty member at the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Brighton, UK. Ceylan holds a PhD in Finance from Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, and was a Marie Curie Fellow at Bayes (formerly Cass) Business School. She was the Founder and Principal Researcher of the Boğaziçi University Digital Finance Working Group. Her research covers a variety of topics integrating finance, technology, and human/organizational behavior. Her current work focuses on ICOs, financial inclusion, and open banking.

Adem Duman

Adem Duman has 26 years of experience in corporate and investment banking, financial management, risk management, insurance, consumer finance, fintech and insur-tech. He served as President and Vice President at the Association of Financial Institutions in 2019-2020, and as a Board Member at EUROFINAS (Federation of European Financial Associations, Brussels). He has held various roles such as General Manager at Turkcell Finansman A.Ş. and Turkcell Sigorta Aracılık A.Ş., Large Corporate Clients Director, Structured Finance Director and International Clients Desk Director at BNP Paribas/TEB, and Corporate Banking Department Manager at BNP Ak Dresdner Bank. Adem Duman is an accredited angel investor and organizes early-stage technology investments in Turkey, the Netherlands and the US with CCW Teknoloji Yatırımları A.Ş., which he founded; he is also a partner and Board Member of ŞirketOrtağım Angel Investment Network. He holds a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Boğaziçi University, and an MA from the Executive MBA program of the same university. He continues his doctoral education.

Prof. Dr. C. Coşkun Küçüközmen

He graduated from Dokuz Eylül University, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Department of Economics and Administrative Sciences in 1984. He worked at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency between 1986-2010. He completed his MA at Loughborough University of Technology and his PhD at Exeter University. He taught MA courses at the Financial Mathematics Department of the METU Applied Mathematics Institute. He took part in meetings organized by international organizations as a participant, speaker and trainer (IMF, World Bank, OECD and Financial Stability Institute, BIS, Basel). In 2010, he started working full-time at Izmir University of Economics, Faculty of Business Administration, Department of International Trade and Finance. He taught Risk Management, Banking and Financial Institutions, Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management, and Financial Econometrics. He has been teaching Global Trade Strategies and Financial Technologies for the last three years. Küçüközmen, who is the Chief Economist at BASİFED, has been serving as an academic advisor within the framework of the TOBB program since 2017. Küçüközmen, who is a member of the AIPA Advisory Board, continues his work on China's Belt and Road Initiative, central bank digital currencies, the use of artificial intelligence in finance, and green finance.