G4S Academy takes security at Turkish bank to the next level

G4S

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The ICBC Turkey Bank is one of Turkey’s major commercial banks, with a significant customer
base and branches across Turkey.

The bank has worked with G4S since 2019 to provide security services including security
professionals for a number of ICBC branches. When G4S in Turkey adopted the G4S Academy
in-country, the team saw the opportunity to improve the service provision and provide expertise to this key customer.

Working hand in hand with the G4S Academy and its international network, the team developed
a number of bespoke products they believed would deliver significant insight and value for the
ICBC.

Legislative compliance

In June 2004 a law was introduced in Turkey called ‘5188’ to ensure that companies offering
security services were legitimate. The legislation allows for government officials to visit sites and
assess the security provision. If services do not meet specific standards, companies can face
significant fines.

Working with G4S Academy experts, G4S designs a thorough annual audit to measure all 38
ICBC branches against the ‘5188’ standards. Across the sites, G4S provides security for 50% of them, however the remainder are manned by in-house staff. This audit ensures that
those in-house teams, as well as G4S staff, are meeting this legal requirement.

Based on this audit, G4S conducts a risk-based analysis to see how systems can be improved.
The report covered physical security measures and technology systems in place such as
access control and monitoring technologies.

Once a year, all ICBC employees will be provided with private security training consisting of
physical security awareness, regulatory legislation and course of action by G4S Turkey expert
trainers. This entails training around 800 employees from all the branches including ICBC’s in-
house security teams.

Surprise security drills

Twice a year G4S Turkey carries out an in-depth 60 question audit across every branch.
This examines the integrated security services that make up each branch’s security detail, such
as the number of security professionals and their shift patterns compared with the footfall of
customers.

This data is processed using G4S Turkey’s own risk analysis system ‘Kokpit’, which holds vast
amounts of information and can use this data to identify deficiencies in security systems and
predict future security requirements.

Once a year, every branch gets a surprise security drill visit by a specialist team from G4S. This
can range from a bag being left in a branch to a staged robbery. The test is to see how security
staff react and handle the situation. Only the branch manager is informed confidentially
beforehand to ensure staff react as they would in a real crisis. The results of these drills are fed
into ‘Kokpit’ to highlight areas of strength and places that need development.

With the data the team is able to provide to ICBC via ‘Kokpit’, they can assess the risks in one
place, spanning all branches in Turkey’s four regions – an agile security provision that no other
company can match.

Bülent Ak, Operations Director for G4S in Turkey says: “This is a really innovative system for us
and one that delivers significant value to the customer. Our aim is to start with ICBC and if it
proves to be as useful as we believe it will be and beneficial for the customer, we can start
rolling it out to our other key customers.”

For more information, visit: www.g4s.com

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