Starting in 2027, large corporate borrowers in Kazakhstan will undergo a mandatory ESG review before receiving a bank loan. The assessment of environmental and social risks will become another procedure in the lending process, but it is precisely this that will ensure compliance with the requirements of international financial organizations and development institutions.
Bank CenterCredit (BCC), whose ESG score from S&P Global rose over two years from 61 to 78 points out of 100, has already integrated artificial intelligence into its sustainability strategy: the technology protects clients' funds from fraudsters. However, automation comes with costs — it requires growth in computing capacity, and employees increasingly have to retrain for new roles.
How ESG screening and AI are changing the bank's operations
Since 2025, the bank has been preparing conclusions on the environmental and social risks of large corporate clients even before their financing applications are reviewed. At this stage, the assessment results do not directly affect the decision to disburse funds: the task is to identify potential problems and take into account their long-term impact on the lending process. Based on the results, the borrower receives recommendations on environmental and social management, information disclosure, or measures to mitigate identified threats, and, if necessary, the bank's consultations.
BCC's ESG strategy envisages the implementation of the technology by 2027, including to reduce credit risks, while every new project must be launched with clear economics. Computer vision models in anti-fraud systems that filter out suspicious transactions have reduced the frequency of fraudulent operations by 5–8 times in certain scenarios and by 27–32% in a number of products, directly protecting the funds of hundreds of thousands of clients.
Digitalization is not climate-neutral: emissions from the energy consumption of the bank's own servers, including neural network tasks, are accounted for as indirect (Scope 2) and are reduced, among other things, through I-REC renewable energy certificates. The computing load will grow along with generative AI, so the bank plans to separately assess the carbon footprint of the technology, including cloud services, and the principle of sufficiency already rules out large models where a compact one will do.
At the same time, automation does not mean staff reductions: employees more often retrain as agent creators who, without code, build digital assistants for their own processes, and for the fast-growing areas of AI Governance and MLOps, which are responsible for the control and infrastructure of algorithms, specialists have to be sought on the market.
Kazakhstan's financial market is changing beyond the banks
BCC Invest, a subsidiary of BCC, organized on the KASE exchange the issuance of Kazakhstan's first digital financial assets (DFAs), with ALTA Telecom LLP as the issuer. Such securities are similar to bonds and allow small and medium-sized businesses to borrow from investors rather than only from banks — faster and cheaper, but without mandatory auditing, buyers will have to rely more on their own assessment of the issuer.
The state is also looking for advantageous financing: the Ministry of Finance plans to raise up to $2 billion in China through panda bonds — yuan-denominated securities on mainland China's market. The head of the ministry, Madi Takiev, noted that at 1.82% per annum, such debt costs the budget less than domestic borrowing.
Businesses also have to take into account the limited capacity of local investors: the founder of the electric scooter rental service Jet, Meirambek Abelkasov, plans to hold an IPO abroad after 2028, as he doubts that the needed capital can be raised in Kazakhstan. The company already regularly places foreign-currency bonds on KASE and the Astana International Exchange (AIX), and ESG preparation is especially important for entering foreign markets, including the European one.
Cryptalist analysis: The introduction of mandatory ESG screening turns sustainability from an image factor into a full-fledged element of credit risk management, which increases the transparency of Kazakh borrowers and facilitates their access to international capital. At the same time, the combination of AI anti-fraud with carbon reporting sets a new standard of operational efficiency for banks in the region. For investors, this is a signal of the gradual institutional maturity of Kazakhstan's market and a reduction in long-term credit risks in the corporate segment.