Kazakhstan has recently achieved an important milestone in its financial history, reaching one million investors in the local stock market. It happened in March 2023. More than 1,188,000 brokerage accounts registered in the nominal holding system of the Central Securities Depository as of April 01, 2023, of which 680,000 were segregated holder subaccounts and the remaining 508,000  were brokerage accounts registered through aggregated omnibus accounts.

Since the beginning of this year, the increase in subaccounts was about 130,000. On April 01, there was a maximum increase in subaccounts – 65,000 at once. This is twice as much as, for example, a month earlier.

Over the past two years, the country's stock market has been actively developing due to a series of reforms and initiatives both of the regulator and professional participants of the securities market, aimed at attracting and increasing participation of citizens of Kazakhstan in stock market. These reforms included introduction of digitalization tools, simplification of regulatory framework and creation of new investment opportunities for both private and institutional investors.

"Growing popularity of the stock market is also evidence of the growing investment literacy of Kazakhstan citizens. For example, in previous years – from 2017 to 2021 – number of subaccounts in the Central Securities Depository grew at a slow pace and securities were not as attractive to Kazakhstan citizens as they are now.  For comparison, during the same period last year (as of April 01, 2022) there were about 315,000 subaccounts in the recordkeeping system of the Central Securities Depository. Thus, the growth of subaccounts for the year was 115 % (excluding omnibus accounts). This is an all-time record," said Adil Mukhamejanov, the Chairman of the Management Board of the Central Securities Depository.

How has the portrait of Kazakhstani investor changed

99 % of the security holders in the Central Securities Depository’s recordkeeping system are Kazakhstan investors. Share of non-residents is only 0.7 % of total number of retail investors. 

The image of a Kazakh investor continues getting younger. The 25 to 34 age group grew from 29.2 % to 31.1 % over the year. At that, the number of retail investors of the older generation decreased. The share of investors older than 55 years decreased from 16.6 % to 14 % over the year.

However, as of April 01 of this year, the largest group of retail investors accounts for investors aged 35 to 54 (36.3 %), which shows a slight increase (35.2%) compared to the same period of the last year.

The group of young investors aged 18 to 24 retained the same share (18.7 %) as a year earlier (18.9%). The share of brokerage accounts opened in the name of minors is still no more than 0.1%.

As for the gender breakdown, the share of women among brokerage account holders is almost equal to men. The difference is only 0.2 %, so, 49.8 % are women, 50.2 % are men. Total for the year from April 01, 2022 to April 01, 2023, the number of female investors in the stock market has grown in 2.5 times.

In territorial breakdown, Almaty (19.9 %) and Astana (11.3 %) are still in the lead. Turkestan region (9.3 %) is on the third place. Share of the North Kazakhstan region still accounts for the smallest number of security holders (1.7 %).

"Reaching a million investors in the stock market is an important milestone for financial sector of Kazakhstan and a challenge for us as an infrastructure organization. The Central Securities Depository is currently in process of transforming many business processes and information systems precisely so that the Kazakhstan securities market becomes more accessible and technologically advanced as well", concluded Adil Mukhamejanov.