“Step on the gas”: Timur Turlov’s Path from Post-Soviet Markets to the Global Stage

The Untapped Market

When Freedom Finance entered Kazakhstan in 2011, retail investing remained a small segment of the country’s securities market. According to KASE’s (Kazakhstan Stock Exchange) annual report, the Central Securities Depository held only 9,888 individual accounts, while the trading venue, which began operations in 1993, was already a major financial market operator by the end of 2011 and recorded a total trading volume of $201.0 billion. The market was geared largely toward institutional investors, with trading dominated by repo and foreign currency transactions.

The Kazakh government began addressing this gap in 2011, when it approved the People’s IPO program, giving citizens an opportunity to buy shares in major state-owned companies. The first offering, KazTransOil, attracted 34,687 applications worth KZT 59.4 billion, with retail investors receiving 79.1% of the shares offered, but came at the very start of Turlov’s entry into the Kazakh market in November-December 2012. At the time, Freedom lacked the infrastructure to participate.

But there was still considerable room to expand retail participation and foster a culture of investing among the population – and, potentially, to build a substantial client base. And Turlov bet on that opportunity. 

Within two years it paid off: Freedom became one of the key brokerage participants in a major public offering. By 2014, Freedom had expanded its brokerage operations across Kazakhstan, establishing a network of 14 offices and opening 20,000 customer brokerage accounts. In December that year, during KEGOC’s People’s IPO, Freedom collected 18,787 applications worth KZT 2.428 billion. The company ranked first among brokers by number of applications and second by their total value, behind Kazpost, which received 13,152 applications worth KZT 2.665 billion.

A Broader Role

What began as a bet on Kazakhstan’s largely untapped retail investor base became part of a broader transformation of the country’s securities market. As Kazakhstan’s public equity market expanded, the number of personal accounts held by private investors at the Central Securities Depository reached 547,000 by January 1, 2023, representing approximately 513,000 individuals. Retail investors accounted for 44.3% of secondary-market share turnover that year, according to KASE’s 2022 annual report.

Against this backdrop, Freedom Holding took on roles in increasingly prominent transactions. In 2022, it was one of four joint coordinators and bookrunners for the IPO of National Company KazMunayGas. The offering attracted KZT 181.5 billion in total demand across 129,948 accepted orders, according to the company’s 2022 annual report. Two years later, Freedom Finance Global acted as lead manager for the Kazakhstan offering in Air Astana’s 2024 IPO, which involved listings of shares on KASE, global depositary receipts on the London Stock Exchange, and both shares and global depositary receipts on Astana International Exchange. The transaction marked another step in Freedom’s evolution from a retail brokerage into a participant in major capital-markets deals (KASE).

But Turlov’s involvement in Kazakhstan’s financial market extended beyond major capital-markets transactions. Freedom also helped transform how financial services were delivered to consumers. This was reflected first in the development of digital tools that gave individual investors access to securities markets in Kazakhstan and international stock markets. The latter became accessible without relying on an offshore account.

Over time, Freedom’s digital offering expanded beyond brokerage to banking, payments, insurance, e-commerce, online travel services, telecommunications and more. These services came together in Freedom’s mobile SuperApp, launched in April 2024. The idea behind the app was to offer customers an integrated digital environment for their everyday needs, rather than requiring them to use separate providers and platforms. The approach has gained traction: by the end of June 2026, the app had reached 6 million registered users, according to company data. 

The Global Reach

Freedom Holding Corp. is now a global fintech ecosystem operating in 24 countries. For fiscal 2026, which ended March 31, Freedom Holding Corp. reported net revenue of $2.19 billion, up from $2.00 billion a year earlier. Net income more than doubled to $153.3 million from $76.2 million. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, ended June 30, net revenue rose 40% year over year to $732.5 million. Total assets reached $14.05 billion, compared with $13.16 billion at the end of fiscal 2026.

The group’s market capitalization on Nasdaq exceeds $11 billion. The growth of Freedom, Turlov’s principal business asset, has also brought him recognition in several business rankings. He ranks sixth on both Forbes Kazakhstan’s list of the country’s 75 richest businesspeople and its ranking of the 50 most influential business figures.

Timur Turlov is also included in Forbes’ global billionaire rankings. Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires ranking placed him at No. 497 worldwide, with an estimated net worth of $7.8 billion as of October 29, 2026. In December 2025, Turlov ranked 10th on Forbes’ 40 Under 40: The Richest Self-Made Billionaires Under 40, which recognizes the world’s 40 wealthiest entrepreneurs under 40 who built their fortunes themselves.

Freedom Holding is a rare example of a Central Asian fintech company that has expanded internationally and is increasingly competing with established industry players. But its story began on a much smaller scale. 

Where It Started 

In 2008, at 21, Timur Turlov, then a Russian citizen, lost his job when the financial crisis in Russia forced the brokerage firm he worked for to shut down. Rather than look for another position, he decided to strike out on his own and launch an investment business. His wife, who was expecting their first child, supported the decision and agreed to invest their family’s savings in the new venture. 

The business initially focused on giving individual investors access to international stock markets, particularly those in the United States. By 2011, however, competition in Russia had intensified, prompting Turlov to look for a market where his young company had more room to grow. A visit to Kazakhstan convinced him that he had found one. 

By the time Freedom Holding Corp. went public on the Nasdaq Capital Market on October 15, 2019, Kazakhstan had become the center and the headquarters of its operations. The company was valued at approximately $800 million at the time of its listing. Since then, its market capitalization has grown more than twelvefold. 

In June 2022, Timur Turlov became a citizen of Kazakhstan, relinquishing his Russian and Saint Kitts and Nevis citizenships under Kazakhstan’s restrictions on dual citizenship. The following year, Freedom Holding completed the sale of its Russian subsidiaries, fully exiting the Russian market by February 2023. 

The Logic of Risk

Timur Turlov’s career reflects an entrepreneurial philosophy that treats risk as an opportunity rather than something to avoid. He believes that in periods of profound change, the ability to act decisively and move ahead of competitors can be more valuable than waiting for uncertainty to subside. 

“When tectonic shifts are taking place, it is crucial to step on the gas and pull ahead. You have to take risks and spend money, rather than simply accumulate it and be afraid of everything,” Turlov wrote in a February 2025 column for Kursiv. In his view, the current environment favors risk-takers, who are increasingly replacing those reluctant to take chances.

Timur Turlov sees this willingness to take risks as one of Kazakhstan’s competitive advantages. He argues that Western competitors often move more slowly, adhering to established practices even when these are inefficient. Their solutions, he says, can be overly conservative, expensive, and sometimes outdated by the time they reach the market. “While we are still actively experimenting and sometimes make mistakes, we may lack experience, but as a nation we are capable of being highly productive in innovation – and we are proud of that,” he wrote. 

This approach to risk also underpins Turlov’s vision for Kazakhstan’s longer-term development. He believes the country has an opportunity to become a regional connector linking Turkic states and the post-Soviet region, while developing into a major payments and financial hub. Turlov goes so far as to describe Kazakhstan as a potential new regional Switzerland, pointing to its investment-grade credit rating, open capital account and international reputation. Achieving that ambition, he argues, will require not avoiding risk, but the courage and expertise to manage it effectively. 

A Model in Motion

Turlov’s ambitions, however, extend well beyond Freedom’s home market. Having built a fintech ecosystem in Kazakhstan and demonstrated its viability there, Freedom now plans to bring the model to other markets. 

The process is already underway in Turkey, where the group operates a brokerage business and has acquired a bank, and in Europe, where it plans to add banking and travel services to its existing brokerage operations. The group is also looking at opportunities to expand its ecosystem into other countries and sectors. 

“You cannot just defend – you have to attack. You have to look for new industries and not be afraid to step outside your comfort zone,” Turlov says.