The Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market of the Republic of Kazakhstan held a meeting with Kazakhstan Stock Exchange infrastructure entities and professional securities market participants to discuss the core priorities for its 2025 securities market supervisory policy. The agenda centred on risk-based supervision outcomes, supervisory stress testing and planned enhancements to prudential and operational requirements for professional participants. The annual RASS assessment, expanded with quantitative and qualitative indicators, was reviewed alongside digitisation steps that automated data collection and supervisory assessment processes. Based on the assessment, the number of high-risk professional participants declined by 30%, attributed to reduced systemic importance. Supervisory stress testing covering 95% of professional participants’ portfolios showed market risk (VaR) rising to 5.8% in 2024 from 3.9% in 2023, while portfolios remained resilient to external shocks and current own funds were described as sufficient to absorb potential losses without breaches of prudential standards. To improve supervisory effectiveness, the Agency has introduced a new approach to calculating the capital adequacy ratio and liquidity of professional participants, and it set an investment limit for participants’ own assets that is planned to be introduced in 2025; further 2025 work includes tightening information security requirements and revisiting risk management systems with reference to international practice. The update also covered market infrastructure developments, including a full modernisation of trading and clearing systems in 2024 and the transfer of clearing and central counterparty functions to a separate KASE Clearing Centre with capital of around USD 19 million, which received an A+ rating from Thomas Murray. The Central Securities Depository’s role was expanded into a regional custody and settlement hub, including foreign exchange services and individual account opening, and an over-the-counter platform was created on its base; banks were given rights to intermediate and manage settlement institution accounts to enable global custodians such as Euroclear and Clearstream to execute transactions in the domestic market. In 2025, further infrastructure development is planned, including expanding the Central Securities Depository’s functions towards custody and use as a global custodian, and exploring the central counterparty’s use as a clearing structure for Central Asia. The Agency also pointed to planned work to increase the share of domestic securities placements and encourage private-sector IPOs, to submit draft laws on credit rating agencies and investment funds to Parliament, and to develop a legal framework for tokenised securities through ongoing market meetings; the refined 2025 supervisory priorities are to be published on the Agency’s website.

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