Roman Goryunov: The AIFC and ITS are developinga liquidity hub for the region’s capital markets

Roman Goryunov, a member of the Board of Directors of international trading platform ITS, spoke at the plenary session of the XXII Eurasian Capital Markets Forum, where he outlined a key challenge facing the region's capital markets: a shortage of liquidity and market participants.

Goryunov explained how the Astana International Financial Centre and ITS are helping address this challenge through their own infrastructure, with access to international assets and the attraction of investors into Kazakhstan's jurisdiction.

The forum, organised by Cbonds, is taking place on June 18-19 in Kazakhstan. Its agenda focuses on the development of local capital markets in the Eurasian region, the impact of global macroeconomic trends on regional financial markets, cross-regional investment, and digital and sustainable financial instruments.

Goryunov noted that, despite many years of development in Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries, their markets are still not fully performing their core function: to attract long-term investment into the real economy. The banking sector in the region is gradually growing, while capital markets remain less developed, even though they should become a driver of economic growth.

He described the main constraint as a vicious circle: without liquidity, participants do not enter the market; without participants, liquidity does not emerge.

"No liquidity means no market; no market means no liquidity. Breaking this circle is extremely difficult, and very few manage to do it," Goryunov said.

This limits the interest of foreign investors: the market lacks sufficient issuers, depth and clear infrastructure, while compliance and assessment of the local legal environment require additional effort. Retail investors, meanwhile, do not yet generate enough demand.

Asuccessful example of resolving this issue is the AIFC, Goryunov said. In his view, ithas become one of Kazakhstan's major achievements and an important driver of the country's financial market development.

"The AIFC attracts international investors who enter the jurisdiction partly to trade international securities and then comfortably begin buying local instruments as well. They have already overcome the barrier that would otherwise have prevented them from entering the jurisdiction at all," Goryunov said.

The ITS experience shows that a hub for trading international assets within a jurisdiction helps increase liquidity and build a community of local and international participants. This is especially important for markets where brokers have traditionally provided clients with access to foreign securities through external infrastructure.

In such a model, the investor often leaves the local jurisdiction: after moving to a foreign platform, they continue trading global assets there, and it becomes significantly more difficult to offer them local instruments. Proprietary infrastructure solves this problem: the investor remains within the regional market and can switch freely between international and local instruments.

"Creating this kind of infrastructure, for trading a broad range of international assets within the jurisdiction, makes it possible to retain the client and gives them the ability to move quickly from one security to another, whether local or international, depending on demand and availability," Goryunov said.

Goryunov also addressed the idea of AIFC as an international financial centre. According to him, creating such a centre requires more than adopting another jurisdiction's regulations or passing a set of documents. It must have a clear market concept, something it offers to international investors.

For Kazakhstan, that concept is the creation of a liquidity hub at a time when major international markets are closed. The country has a unique time-zone position: when it is already evening in Asia and still night in the United States, there are virtually no active international venues offering liquidity in global assets.

"Astana has already managed to become a centre of liquidity for international assets at a time when other venues effectively do not exist," Goryunov said.

This advantage may remain in place for the next two to three years, until leading global exchanges shift to round-the-clock trading. During this period, Kazakhstan can accumulate liquidity and develop a stable base of participants who will remain in the jurisdiction even after new competing venues appear.

The XXII Eurasian Capital Markets Forum brings together representatives of financial markets, infrastructure organisations, banks, brokers, investment companies and issuers from Kazakhstan, the Eurasian region and other jurisdictions. ITS is the forum's general partner.

About ITS

ITS is a trading platform operating under the jurisdiction of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC). ITS offers investors more than 3,200 global market instruments listed in the U.S. and Kazakhstan. Among the unique products co-developed by ITS are exchange-traded funds based on proprietary indexes, as well as the opportunity to trade shares of companies going public before the start of trading in New York.

In 2025, ITS achieved record results: total trading volume exceeded $14 billion, 70 times the 2024 figure. The number of investors with access to trading exceeded 1.2 million. The platform hosts 23 participants from seven countries: Kazakhstan, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Oman and South Africa.

ITS clients are professional securities market participants from Kazakhstan and other countries - financial intermediaries accredited or registered with the AIFC. Retail and corporate investors gain access to trading through financial intermediaries - brokers and banks.