AIX reports one million individual accounts
As the press service of the Astana International Exchange (AIX) reported, the number of individual accounts opened by Kazakhstanis has reached one million. Over the past three years, this rate has grown sixfold.
According to AIX, retail investors have thrived over the past several years thanks to technological progress in the sphere of investments. For example, they can use different online apps to trade on the stock exchange. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the industry and driven the number of individual accounts sky-high.
«All those restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed retail investors towards the stock market. Over the period from 2021 to the first half of 2023 people opened thousands of new accounts for investors driven by the desire to make a profit from the market,» AIX said in a statement.
AIX was established in 2017 within the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC). The exchange is controlled by the AIFC, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Silk Road Fund and NASDAQ, the trading platform that AIX uses in its day-to-day operations.
The stock exchange relies on English law in its daily operations and is regulated by AIFC’s committee. The AIX’s mission is the development of an active capital market in Kazakhstan and the region at the expense of clear and favorable conditions for raising funds by private and public enterprises. AIX is also involved in the development of special segments for mining companies and infrastructural projects under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. In the middle of 2023, AIX was chosen by Polymetal International, one of the biggest global producers of gold and silver which went through the process of redomiciliation from the British island of Jersey to the AIFC.
While delivering his latest address to the nation President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev suggested combining the two Kazakhstani exchanges, KASE and AIX to avoid repetition and unnecessary competition.
Later, Madina Abylkasova, head of the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market, said that the agency is going to sleep on the idea of combining the two stock exchanges. She also said that AIFC won’t take over KASE.
«In terms of transactions, liquidity and publicly traded stocks KASE is much bigger than AIFC. KASE is the local stock exchange. It is going to last forever. However, we are talking about a so-called united pool of liquidity created by KASE and AIX,» the official noted.
In July AIX said that the amount of trades on the exchange rose by 1.8 times from $77 million to $140 million over the first six months of 2023 compared to the same period last year. In the first half of the current year, issuers were very interested in using debt instruments, raising $994 million. The exchange has raised $3.4 billion in debt capital and $356 million in share capital since the very start of its operation.
At the end of May 2023, KASE reported that in 2022, it had 963,700 individual accounts, including 550,200 subaccounts and 413,500 omnibus accounts (a type of brokerage account in which the broker pools together the assets of multiple clients and holds them in a single account). Last year, individuals opened 340,000 accounts (about 87,000 accounts in 2021). As of January 1, 2023, there were 547,100 personal accounts opened for 513,500 individuals in the Central Depository of KASE.
