Freedom Insurance has grown nearly tenfold in five years, offset billions in auto insurance losses through digitalization and is now preparing to launch an insurance marketplace. In an interview with Kursiv.media, Freedom Insurance CEO Azamat Kerimbayev explained why auto insurance rates are set to rise by more than 40% for half of Kazakhstan’s drivers and how artificial intelligence (AI) assesses vehicle damage from photos.
– In February, you said Freedom Insurance’s goal was to capture 25% of the market by 2030. Are you still on track?
– We doubled our annual growth through 2025 and currently hold about 15% of the market. The 25% target still stands, but sustaining that pace is objectively harder now. Our growth rate slowed, as expected, in 2026. Further growth will have to come from new, unique products and from entering underserved market segments.
– CTPL is a loss-making product. Where do you draw the line between «growing market share» and «growth that’s no longer economically rational»?
– The CTPL market is extremely unprofitable. The payout-to-premium ratio reaches 170%. Our ceiling in the CTPL market is around 30% to 40%. Our DTP.kz platform helps us manage that burden. The investment has paid off 14 times over: in 2025 alone, we saved $14 million on claims by cutting out intermediaries. Our average claim payout runs 130,000 tenge lower than the industry average.
– What’s the current state of DTP.kz? Is claims processing getting faster?
– We no longer handle physical case files — 100% of claims go through DTP.kz. In early 2026, we hit an industry record of 5,000 payouts in a single month. Team efficiency has jumped dramatically: in 2024, one specialist processed 31 claims a month; now that figure is 87. Clients no longer need to bring us paper documents. We pull the necessary information directly from government databases. They inspect their own vehicles through the app, and our AI reviews the photos and video to assess the damage and automatically generate an appraisal report. About 70% of payouts are processed within 30 days.
– What stage is the SuperApp insurance marketplace at right now?
– We expect the new insurance law to pass by year-end. The infrastructure and government database integrations are already built. As soon as the legal framework is in place, we’ll launch a marketplace where clients can compare and choose products from different insurers on a single platform. Several insurers have already signaled they’re ready to participate.
– Picture Freedom Insurance five years from now. Will it be an insurance company or an IT platform?
– Our back office already employs around 100 IT specialists, data scientists and AI engineers. We’re essentially more of an IT company than a traditional insurer at this point. In five years, our insurance license will still be the core platform through which we assume risk, but it will be wrapped in a much larger IT platform with API integrations and AI solutions.
– What products are you planning to bring to Central Asian and other markets?
– As the holding company expands through its banking licenses, we’ll enter Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia with the DTP.kz platform and its AI-powered damage-assessment module. Our second product with strong export potential is agricultural insurance, which can be scaled relatively easily thanks to international reinsurance.
DTP.kz, by the way, isn’t a single-company platform anymore. Nine Kazakhstani insurers now use it to combat fraud.
By 2027, we want half of all claims under 1 million tenge to be approved entirely by AI, with no human involvement. The algorithm would independently assess the damage, price out the parts and offer the client a settlement, driving operating costs on those claims to zero.
Read the full interview here.
