According to Lyazzat Satiyeva, head of the Kazakhstani Eurasian Bank, the Central Bank of the Republic of Uzbekistan has given the bank preliminary permission to open a subsidiary in the country.
The official noted that Eurasian Bank filed its application to the Central Bank in December 2022. Earlier last year, Uzbekistan’s Agency for Regulation and Development of Financial Market also gave its permission to the Kazakhstani bank to open its subsidiary in Uzbekistan.
Satiyeva noted that the licensing procedure in Uzbekistan includes two stages.
«At the first stage, the Central Bank of Uzbekistan gives its preliminary permission for the establishment of a bank. The second stage is an official registration of that bank and issuing a license for them,» she said.
Satiyeva also noted that Eurasian Bank is aimed at the rapid development of its digital retail products in Uzbekistan. Given that consumer demand in Uzbekistan and the country more generally has been growing fast over the past several years, the competition between banks is quite high.
«We’ve been pursuing the digitalization of retail business since 2020. For instance, we have significantly improved debt recovery with the help of an automated system. As a result, we collect 83% of the debt with 14 days of delay,» Satiyeva noted.
Once the registration procedure is over, Eurasian Bank will be the second Kazakhstani commercial bank that operates in Uzbekistan. The first is Halyk Bank’s subsidiary Tengebank, which has been operating in the country since 2019. As of January 2023, it was ranked 19th in terms of assets out of 32 Uzbekistani commercial banks.
Eurasian Bank announced its plans to expand its business in Uzbekistan back in 2017. At the time, the bank considered several options. In 2021, Valentin Morozov, former head of the bank said that the expansion plan was dependent on Uzbekistan’s regulators but didn’t reveal any detail.
Eurasian Bank is controlled by the Eurasian Financial Company owned by Mukadaskhan Ibragimova, Patokh Shodiyev and Alexander Mashkevich. Each of them possesses a 33.3% stake in the company.
