Kazakhstan's 2 Islamic banks show stable growth

NUR-SULTAN. KAZINFORM Al Hilal and Zaman-Bank are the two Islamic banks operating in Kazakhstan today. The latter received an official permit from the National Bank for voluntary reorganization into the Islamic Bank in 2016. In August 2017 the bank obtained its license and was renamed as the JSC Islamic Bank ‘Zaman Bank', according to Ranking.kz.

In a year, the total share of Islamic banks in the assets of Kazakhstan's second-tier banks has increased from 0.16% to 0.23%. In late January 2019, this indicator was at 32.6bn tenge for Al Hilal Bank (+39.6% per annum) and 24.6bn tenge for Zaman Bank (+67.4% per annum).

The total volume of own capitals also showed a positive dynamics within a year: by 8.4% (16.1bn tenge) for Al Hilal Bank and by 7.9% (12.7bn tenge) for Zaman-Bank.

The activity of Al-Hilal and Zaman banks must comply with the principles and norms of sharia law. The banks are prohibited to lend and accept money at interest.

In the past year, both banks observed growth of their loan and deposit portfolios. Thus, Al Hilal Bank's loan portfolio rose by 37.9% and comprised 8.8bn tenge, while Zaman-Bank's loan portfolio increased to 13.8bn tenge (+7.3%).

Deposits at Al Hilal Bank increased 2.4fold and made 14.4bn tenge. The volume of deposits at Zaman-Bank increased by 2.3 times and reached 652mn tenge. Noteworthy to say that the corporate deposits prevail in deposit portfolios of the two banks: 94% at Al Hilal Bank and 98.5% at Zaman-Bank.