When people talk about exports, they usually think of raw materials, technology, or industrial goods. Timur Turlov sees it differently. The head of Freedom Holding Corp. has decided to bring to foreign markets not a single service, but an entire digital system that the company has been building inside Kazakhstan for almost a decade, DKNews.kz reports.
Freedom is preparing to develop its own infrastructure in Türkiye, a country with a population of around 86 million people. For the holding company, this is not simply about opening another office on the map. It is about transferring a model that brings together banking services, investments, insurance, and digital services for everyday life.
Why the Market Is Not Measured Only by Population
For Freedom, Türkiye is becoming a testing ground for scaling its digital model beyond Kazakhstan. The company has already started building its presence in the country through its brokerage structure, Freedom Yatirim. The next step was an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in Turkish Bank — 99.32 percent of its shares.
This configuration gives Freedom access to two segments of the financial market at once: investment services and banking services for clients.
What makes Freedom’s international expansion especially interesting is that it is developing according to a reverse scenario compared with many competitors. Usually, companies first expand abroad and only then build an ecosystem. In Freedom’s case, the ecosystem was created before the geographical expansion.
What the Company Considers Its Main Asset
The company’s financial results look impressive. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026, Freedom Holding Corp.’s revenue reached $2.19 billion. Net income rose to $153.3 million, compared with $76.2 million a year earlier. Assets exceeded $13 billion. Since its listing on Nasdaq, the company’s revenue has increased more than 26 times.
But another figure is even more revealing. The number of clients in the banking segment grew from 2.5 million to more than 5 million people in one year. The brokerage business expanded its audience to 858,000 clients. This shows not only the scale of the business, but also the speed at which digital services are spreading within the ecosystem.
SuperApp as the Foundation for Growth
At the center of this entire structure is the Freedom SuperApp. Today, it has more than 5 million users. Through one application, clients can access investments, banking products, insurance, ticket purchases, and other services. The company’s management believes this model can work far beyond Kazakhstan.
In international markets, Freedom is no longer competing only with traditional banks. Its rivals are large digital platforms that aim to keep users inside their own ecosystems for as long as possible.
From Istanbul to Europe
The direction toward Türkiye appears to be only part of a much larger route. The company has applied for a banking license in France and plans to develop financial services across the European Union. The European project is expected to involve investments of 500 million euros, with a target audience estimated at 50 million clients in the first three years.
At the same time, the holding company is expanding its presence in Asia. Japan, Mongolia, Pakistan, Georgia, and Armenia are among the markets of interest. Options for further development of digital services in the United States are also being discussed.
Just a few years ago, Freedom was seen as a fast-growing financial company from Kazakhstan. Now its scale looks different. It is about turning a local digital model into an international product capable of competing across several continents. Türkiye will become the first major test for this idea in a market of such scale — but certainly not the last.
