The Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market of the Republic of Kazakhstan published an article by Deputy Chair Dauren Salimbayev setting out the main provisions of a draft new Banks Law developed since early 2025. The draft is presented as a comprehensive reworking of the legal framework for banking, covering regulation and supervision, licensing, consumer protection and bank resilience and resolution, with significant new provisions on digitalisation. A new legal regime would be introduced for digital financial assets (DFAs), treated as financial instruments and covering money-backed stablecoins, asset-backed digital assets and tokenised securities such as shares and bonds, with mandatory registration of platforms and requirements on transaction monitoring, internal controls, disclosures and investor protection. The National Bank of Kazakhstan would set technical standards for digital platforms and infrastructure and regulate stablecoin issuance and circulation, while the Agency would regulate the issuance and trading of digital securities and other financial instruments, set issuer requirements, oversee disclosures and ensure investor protection, with both authorities defining rules for key market infrastructure such as platforms, registrars and exchanges. The draft would also закрепить the legal status of the digital tenge and tighten requirements for payment organisations, including criteria for registration and removal from the payment organisations register. Market access would shift to a two-tier bank licensing model, with basic licences for small banks subject to simplified minimum capital requirements but restrictions including a ban on lending to affiliated parties and non-residents, limits on risky investments and large transactions, and caps on taking retail deposits, while remaining subject to supervisory review including SREP. Conduct supervision would be expanded through requirements on fair advertising, product term disclosure, bans on forced sales, suitability assessments and responsible lending standards, alongside a two-stage complaints process culminating in a unified financial ombudsman service. The draft would add a three-stage crisis framework of enhanced supervision, recovery and resolution, require banks to prepare recovery plans, introduce tools such as temporary administration, bail-in style write-down or conversion of capital and debt, transfers of assets and liabilities, bridge banks and asset separation, and impose Total Loss Absorbing Capacity (TLAC) requirements for systemically important banks, with state support limited to extreme cases and subject to the No Creditor Worse Off principle. The article also highlights stronger corporate governance standards, a three-year limit on holding foreclosed property on bank balance sheets, and an “Islamic windows” model allowing conventional banks to offer Islamic finance within an existing licence under segregation and Sharia governance, noting that more than 30 market discussions and consultations were held between January and May.

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