How Freedom Bank is Shaping the Fast-Changing Future of Banking
How Freedom Bank is Shaping the Fast-Changing Future of Banking. The FT Global Banking Summit — one of the sector’s key annual events — took place in London from 2 to 4 December 2025.
Written By: BOSS Editorial
Reading Time: 3 minutes
In early December, London hosted the FT Global Banking Summit, where the world’s financial leaders debated the future of banking. Amid discussions on artificial intelligence (AI), digitalization, and IT transformation, Kazakhstan’s Freedom Bank stood out by demonstrating how bold technological moves can turn traditional banking principles into a fast, flexible, and customer-focused reality.
The FT Global Banking Summit — one of the sector’s key annual events — took place in London from 2 to 4 December 2025, bringing together over 1,000 attendees, 150 speakers, and 75 sessions across 9 venues. With this year’s theme, “Navigating complexity, driving innovation,” the summit stands at the forefront of the global banking agenda, offering a platform to monitor the industry’s pulse, understand its challenges, and anticipate the next phase of development.
Future in Focus
As in many other sectors, key discussions at the summit focused on the use of cutting-edge technologies in the banking industry. Executives from leading financial institutions across different regions shared their views on the future of IT architecture, digitalization of products, and the increasing role of AI in banking operations alongside traditional methods. The pace and shape of transformation differ widely across countries, shaped by culture, regulation, and societal attitudes toward digital solutions.
One particularly compelling perspective came from Timur Turlov, CEO and Founder of Freedom Holding Corp., the NASDAQ-listed parent organization of a diversified fintech group offering brokerage, banking, life-style, media and telecom services in more than 20 countries – the lead sponsor of the event.
Within Freedom Holding Corp., headquartered in Kazakhstan, innovative banking plays a key role. Freedom Bank drives change simultaneously across all key areas currently undergoing major transformation in banking: product digitalization, IT architecture modernization, and the integration of AI into daily operations. “IT is the bank’s key competency. The future of banking is technology. The logic of processes is designed by financiers, but everything else is engineering,” highlighted Timur Turlov during a panel discussion at the FT Global Banking Summit.
Freedom Banking, Upgraded
In digitalizing its banking products, Freedom Bank is leading the way. Its portfolio includes fully remote auto loans, mortgages, and loans for entrepreneurs. All of these can be processed quickly without visiting a branch, thanks to the bank’s own digital technologies and integration with government digital services. As a result, for example, the mortgage approval process has been reduced from weeks to just 24 hours.
Regarding IT architecture modernization, Freedom Bank still relies on some third-party solutions, but each year it reduces dependence on external vendors. “We believe competitive advantage lies in controlling our own technology. You cannot be a digital bank without managing your core systems. We started by buying ready-made solutions, then began customizing them, and now aim to fully control card processing and core banking,” Turlov explained.
As to AI, Freedom Bank applies it across all stages of banking operations — from back-office processes to the front end. It is particularly valuable in credit scoring, Know Your Client procedures, and customer interactions. Among recent innovations, the bank introduced an AI assistant in its SuperApp — a fully-fledged digital helper that responds to voice commands. According to Turlov, clients perceive it naturally, just as children interact with chatbots or TikTok. “Now this is the new standard,” he summarized.
From Stability to Agility
This approach brings a new perspective to a classic banking principle — “don’t touch what works” — by combining proven methods with fast and flexible digital transformation.
“Our experience emerged in a very different environment, where digitalization developed primarily as a response to new societal demands and challenges. Our task was to rapidly build trust, transparency, and predictable rules in areas where traditional approaches no longer functioned. That context made our digital transformation more flexible and human-centric,” Turlov noted.
This shows how a classic banking principle can evolve in the digital era. Approaches that once focused on stability are now being adapted to drive innovation and transformation. In short, it sounds – “make it work even better”, according to Timur Turlov.
