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Halyk Bank is Kazakhstan's largest bank, taking deposits from ordinary people and businesses and lending that money out as loans.
Halyk Bank is the biggest bank in Kazakhstan, and for most people there it is simply the place where their salary lands, their savings sit, and their mortgage and car loan live. It runs the largest branch and ATM network in the country, which matters in a place where cash still matters and where a lot of people live far from the big cities. There are two main sides to the business: retail banking for ordinary households and small businesses, and corporate banking for larger companies.
The core money machine is simple. Halyk collects deposits, often paying savers a modest rate, and lends that money out at a higher rate to people buying homes and cars and to businesses funding their operations. The gap between what it pays savers and what it earns from borrowers is the engine, and it runs best when the economy is calm and borrowers repay. On top of that it earns fees from cards, payments, insurance, and its brokerage arm, which smooths out the bumpy lending income. What makes Halyk strong is scale and trust. It is the bank the government and big companies tend to pick, and its sheer size gives it cheaper funding and a huge customer base that rivals have to spend heavily to chip away at. That competitive position has produced very strong profits and generous dividends, and the bank has returned a large chunk of its earnings to shareholders over the years rather than hoarding them all. It also expanded into neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and bought a controlling stake in a local insurer, spreading its bets a little beyond Kazakhstan.
In 1923, the government opened a small savings cash desk in Aktyubinsk, the first of a network meant to get ordinary people to save money. That network grew across Kazakhstan, and Halyk Bank today is its direct descendant, still carrying the word 'Halyk' — meaning 'People's' — in its name.
When Kazakhstan became independent, the old savings bank network became the foundation of Halyk Bank in 1991, and the bank became a cornerstone of the new country's banking system. It later grew into the wider Halyk Group.
The bank became an open joint-stock company and was privatised over the next few years. Its shares were listed on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange in 1998, and by 2004 the Almex group held a controlling stake.
In 2006, Halyk listed its shares in London to raise money for growth, and the market's embrace was so warm that for five weeks it was the most expensive bank in the world. That trust paid off later: it let the bank place bonds remotely in 2008, when the global financial crisis had frozen most markets.
In 2009, Umut Shayakhmetova became Chairperson of the Management Board, and she went on to lead the bank through its transformation into a digital and regional leader.
Halyk finalised the acquisition of a majority stake in Kazkommertsbank, making it the undisputed leader of Kazakh banking. Moody's liked the move enough to upgrade Halyk's rating to Ba1, and the bank began merging the two banks' products and services.
The following year brought the startling final step: Halyk acquired Kazkommertsbank for a single tenge. The deal added big assets and a larger customer base, and completed the consolidation of the country's biggest banks into one.
In June 2023, the company dropped 'Savings' from its name, becoming Halyk Bank of Kazakhstan Joint Stock Company. The name got simpler; the business kept getting bigger.
In 2025, Halyk signed a strategic agreement with Click, Uzbekistan's leading fintech, to buy 49% of it and sell a similar stake in Tenge Bank to Click's shareholders, aiming for a combined client base of over 32 million people. But the other parties did not get the required regulatory approvals, the documents expired, and the deal was never completed.
In 2026, Euromoney named Halyk Kazakhstan's Best Bank and Best for Corporates. The bank served 11.3 million customers and financed nearly half of the real economy among second-tier banks, and it signed a loan deal with China Exim Bank — the first of its kind among Kazakh commercial banks.
The flip side is that a bank this dominant is only as healthy as the economy around it. Kazakhstan's fortunes are tied to oil and metals, so a slump in commodity prices, a currency shock, or a wave of bad loans hits the bank directly. It also faces state-backed rivals and a fast-growing digital push from smaller players, and regulators keep a close eye on a lender large enough to matter to the whole financial system. Still, the basic story is straightforward: Halyk is the country's financial backbone, and it makes money by being the bank most people and companies trust with their cash.
Saved answer · last researched 5 Nov 2026