The Raiffeisen Bank has been admitted to the KASE as a foreign member.
The Russian affiliate of Austrian Raiffeisen Zentralbank has officially become the fourth foreign member of the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange in the foreign currency section.
According to the bank, it plans to develop trading in tenge, the local currency.
The membership gives Raiffeisen a right to trade with foreign currency pair such as USD/KZT, RUB/KZT, CNY/KZT, EUR/KZT and EUR/USD. In 2020 the volume of foreign currency trading at the KASE rose to 11.6 trillion tenge ($27.5 billion) or by 4% compared to the previous year. At the same time, the volume of daily trading is about 47.2 billion tenge ($112.2 million) or $282,664 per one sale on average. There are 32 exchange members, which took part in these transactions.
According to the KASE website, three other foreign banks are counted along with Raiffeisen as exchange members: UNIVER Capital (registered at the stock market and market of derivatives sections); Freedom Finance Investment Company (the stock market section) and Interstate Bank (foreign currency section).
As Raiffeisen Bank noted, it sees a stable trend in increasing interest to trading with tenge that its clients and a wide range of market participants have shown.
«We work with almost every Kazakhstani bank when it comes to the OTC market. Therefore, obtaining KASE membership is reasonable. Our goal is to develop our business in Kazakhstan further and we are intended to contribute to the country’s financial market, its growth, and development,» the bank said.
Besides foreign currency, Raiffeisen is also interested in stock and derivatives markets.
As the press service of KASE noted, the high demand for regular currency converting is based on bilateral trade between Russia and Kazakhstan.
«Given that Raiffeisen Bank is one of those financial institutions which supports that trade, it’s strongly interested in currency position managing and wants to do that with minimal risk. Because KASE has operated as the central counteragent at the foreign currency market since October 1, 2018, Raiffeisen Bank’ membership to the exchange will allow the bank to achieve its goals,» the press service of the bank noted.
However, Raiffeisen bank is not the first bank to become a member of the KASE. The first one was Russian Promsvyazbank, which had been a KASE member over the 2010-2015 period and then quit the exchange by its own decision.
