Freedom Holding Corp has undergone a transformation that few could have predicted. It listed on Nasdaq in 2019 as a mid-sized Kazakh brokerage, the first Kazakh brokerage ever to list in the US, yet today it is a $9.6bn fintech platform with operations spanning Central Asia, Europe, the US and the Middle East. Having recently acquired a Turkish bank, regulatory conversations under way in Georgia and Europe, and a chief executive who speaks openly about the coming consolidation of global finance — Freedom's expansion is quickly turning from vision into reality.

The numbers tell the story of a company in a different gear. Shares have risen more than tenfold since the 2019 listing and gained over 20% this year alone to trade at $157.27. For the quarter ending December 31, the group reported revenue of $628.6mn, bringing nine-month revenue to $1.69bn with net profit of $76.2mn. Total assets rose 25% to $12.38bn while equity exceeded $1.3bn. Institutional investors including BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are on the register; S&P Global Ratings assigns a B- rating with a stable outlook.

Kazakhstan is the home market, but that financial firepower is now being pointed outward at the rest of the world.

From brokerage to ecosystem

The foundation of Freedom's expansion story is what it achieved in Kazakhstan — and how fast. Two years ago, the group's super-app had around half a million customers in its home market. Today that figure stands at 5.2mn, equivalent to more than a quarter of the country's entire population. The broader ecosystem now spans over 11mn customers globally.

The group’s super app is driving the growth. Launched in April 2024, it is now ranked number one and number three on the App Store and Google Play in Kazakhstan respectively. The platform bundles banking, investment, travel, ticketing and loyalty services into a single interface and has become the primary distribution engine for Freedom's integrated financial services. Its loyalty programme converts cashback automatically into fractional shares of Freedom Holding Corp itself — turning customers into shareholders and embedding them in the company's fortunes.

"I don't just make money from them," founder Timur Turlov said. "I am sharing value with them. If the bank is rising, so will their wealth."

In travel alone, Freedom has grown its domestic flight market share from roughly 10% to between 25-30% in under two years.

The growth came in spite of the domination of Kaspi, the Nasdaq-listed payments champion that once commanded around 85% of Kazakhstan's economic transactions. Freedom has taken roughly 15% of that share in a single year. "So, it is possible to compete," Turlov said, "even if someone has already consolidated the market." That conviction now underwrites the group's international expansion thesis.

Personnel expenses increased 43.4% year-on-year to KZT42.3bn ($93mn), reflecting the pace of investment in technology and hiring needed to sustain that momentum. The group has signed agreements with Nvidia and OpenAI and has built a 500-strong development centre in Cyprus focused on scaling its digital infrastructure across the whole ecosystem. Further mergers and acquisitions are described as incoming, details of which remain under embargo.

Central Asia: the proving ground

Kazakhstan remains the core of the business, but Freedom is moving quickly to replicate its model across the region.

The clearest proof of concept so far is Tajikistan, where Freedom received a banking licence in autumn 2024 and completed the launch of what Turlov describes as the country's first fully digital bank in under a year. The group is now rolling out credit cards, mortgages and consumer services there through its super-app model.

"We got a banking licence in Tajikistan in a very short period of time," Turlov said in an exclusive interview with IntelliNews. "This gave us experience of how we can replicate the digital ecosystem we built in Kazakhstan in another country."

The regional push extends further. Freedom has opened a brokerage in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and holds an existing brokerage business in Uzbekistan, where it has become one of the largest retail broker-dealers, though full digital banking services there are still being scoped. Georgia is next in line, with a banking licence application actively in preparation and, according to the National Bank of Georgia, significant resources already being devoted to the process. The group has secured approval from its home regulator and established a dedicated working group in contact with Georgian banking authorities.

The strategy reflects a deliberate sequencing: build confidence, capture licences and prove the ecosystem model in markets close to home before taking it further afield.

"Central Asia is a market we know very well," Turlov said. "They speak more or less the same language; they know our technology — it's very easy to present these opportunities to them."

The regional push is seen internally as the path of least resistance compared with the regulatory complexity of western markets.

"It's much easier," Turlov said, "because there's no need to fight so hard — sometimes you just need to invest and they help you build the business."

The group enters new markets not as a start-up but with a pre-built technological and operational framework already proven at scale in Kazakhstan.

Turkey: the bridge market

Turkey has emerged as Freedom's most significant near-term acquisition target and a potential gateway between Asian capital and European markets. The group obtained a full brokerage licence there in 2025 and has since completed the acquisition of a 99.2% stake in Turkish Bank A.Ş. — a deal that has been formally settled and is expected to require investment of up to $300mn over the coming years.

If regulators approve the full integration, the Turkish banking licence would allow Freedom to link payments, deposits and trading inside a single digital ecosystem — a template it hopes to carry further west.

Turkey is a bridge market and already looking East for new partners as IntelliNews featured in the Golden Triangle, as Turkey shares cultural and linguistic ties with the Caucasus and Central Asia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a regular visitor to the region, which he considers to be Turkey’s backyard and Turkish firms are already active throughout the region. Indeed, the modern Turkish nation has its roots in the Oghuz Turks, a branch of the Turkic peoples who migrated from Central Asia into Anatolia primarily in the eleventh century.

Executives view Turkey as more accessible than the EU, citing greater regulatory openness and fewer cultural barriers, while its position straddling European and Asian capital flows gives it strategic value as a bridgehead. The expansion also places Freedom in direct competition with the Kazakh fintech powerhouse Kaspi.kz, which is pursuing a similar regional strategy beyond its own home market.

Georgia: the next foothold

Freedom is also moving to establish a presence in Georgia. The country's National Bank president, Natia Turnava, confirmed that the group is actively preparing a banking licence application after meeting Freedom representatives in Washington on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings.

The company has already secured regulatory approval from its home regulator in Kazakhstan and set up a dedicated working group in contact with the National Bank of Georgia. No formal application has yet been submitted, but Turnava's tone was optimistic.

"We hope another foreign, regional bank will enter the Georgian market," she said, adding that Freedom's decision to seek out the meeting in Washington was itself a signal of serious intent.

Europe: ambition meets regulation

Europe represents Freedom's most strategically significant and most structurally complex target. The group already has a foothold through its Freedom24 brokerage platform, with more than 600,000 clients. Across the EU, its largest markets are Greece — accounting for around 150,000 clients alone — Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Spain. The full technology operation is headquartered in Cyprus, where Freedom Finance Technologies employs more than 500 developers building infrastructure for the entire global ecosystem.

The group holds a full brokerage licence under Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), granting it the right to serve investors across all EU member states.

But brokerage is only the entry point. The primary objective is a European banking licence — one that would allow Freedom to deploy its full suite of integrated financial services across the bloc and compete directly with Revolut, N26, Trade Republic, and the like.

"The next big milestone would be expanding into Europe and eventually the US," Turlov said. "Presence in these two markets is essential to survive in the long term — survival of your technology will depend on which markets you are present in."

Freedom's approach has been to enter markets through brokerage first and layer banking services on top as licensing allows — approaching regulated finance sideways.

The group does not offer CFDs – Contracts for Difference, leveraged financial derivatives that allow traders to speculate on the price movements of underlying assets – or cryptocurrency, a deliberate positioning choice its executives frame as a reputational asset, describing itself as occupying a middle ground between legacy banks and crypto-adjacent fintechs.

In parallel, it is quietly building the infrastructure needed to compete at the highest level and the group is pursuing membership of the Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Euronext stock exchanges.

Turlov is watching the regulatory environment carefully and sees it shifting. "They realised Revolut was their mistake — not being on board," he said. "Now a lot of regulators are becoming a lot more open."

Eastern Europe as a foothold

Alongside its western European aspirations, Freedom is building a network of small offices across Eastern Europe as the most accessible near-term growth markets. Romania and the Czech Republic are both expected to have offices open before the end of the year, with hiring already under way in both. Bulgaria already has an established presence, and Lisbon is under consideration for a 2026 opening.

Each follows a consistent template: a boutique team of around five to six people covering local sales, compliance and tech support, with all services delivered and regulated through the Cyprus headquarters. Eastern Europe is openly acknowledged as a stepping stone — building the credibility needed to support the banking licence application that would unlock the group's broader ambitions.

Germany looms as the most competitive market. Trade Republic alone is believed to be spending upwards of €500mn annually on Google and Meta advertising, say Freedoms inhouse analysts. Bunq, Scalable Capital, N26 and Coinbase round out a crowded field. Freedom intends to compete regardless, and the capital requirements are clear-eyed.

"If we want to build a decent bank we need many hundreds of millions of net capital," Turlov said. "It has to be equity."

The image problem

Competing in Europe from a Central Asian base presents a challenge that goes beyond regulation and capital. The post-Soviet origin of the group carries an image burden in western markets where awareness of the region is limited.

"We need to put the post-Soviet Republic on the global map," one senior executive acknowledged, "while competing with companies that are native to their home markets."

The response is twofold: accelerating AI-driven product launches developed in Cyprus, while leaning into regulatory solidity — a long Nasdaq listing history, a decade of operating under CySEC oversight and a deliberate avoidance of crypto and CFDs — to project trustworthiness that newer fintechs cannot match.

The long game

The tension running through Freedom's strategy is clear. Its model was built for markets where regulation is still evolving. Its ambitions lie in jurisdictions where it is mature, complex and slow to change.

"It is not going to be easy to come to the EU and US market," Turlov acknowledged. "We try to work extremely hard to build some confidence in regulators in bigger markets."

But the strategic logic, as Turlov frames it, is existential rather than merely opportunistic.

"Like Google, like Meta, they serve the whole world. Outside of some closed countries, tech is becoming global. In technology, the winner often takes most of the market. We see this in AI, in search, in social media, and it will happen in finance as well." He paused. "Eventually there will be only a few major players serving customers worldwide. Competition will be intense, and survival will be the main goal."

The brokerage that listed in New York six years ago has grown into something considerably harder to categorise. Whether it can make the leap from Central Asian champion to global contender remains the defining question. Turlov does not appear to entertain much doubt.

"In technology, the winner often takes most of the market," he said. "We intend to be one of them."