Bringing on innovations
AIX launched four new exchange-traded notes (ETNs) in order to provide local retail investors with a broader range of investment options. There are now 9 ETNs listed which track various benchmark indexes, such as high yield US corporate bonds and high dividend companies. All of them can be traded not only via brokers, but also via Tabys mobile application. Tabys was developed to attract those smaller retail investors who are unfamiliar with the stock market and helps them to invest for their financial future.
In conjunction with BCC Invest JSC, AIX listed BCC Global Exchange Traded Notes linked to the performance of one of the largest domestic interval mutual funds – “CenterCredit-Valyutniy”.
The AIX has become the first exchange in the world which migrated its core trading infrastructure—the Nasdaq matching engine—onto Amazon Web Services (AWS). This transition enables AIX to enhance the performance of its trading services while delivering agility and scalability to its investor community. It also gives AIX flexibility to launch new products and services faster and more cost-efficiently for its securities market.
AIX CSD
In 2020 Thomas Murray, the global post-trade risk and custody specialists, assigned Astana International Exchange Central Securities Depository (AIX CSD) an overall risk assessment of ‘A’, which denotes a ‘Low Risk’.Raiffeisenbank has become a Participant of the AIX CSD, thereby allowing international institutional investors to hold their assets at the AIX CSD under the bank’s custody.Also, the AIX CSD opened a foreign nominee account with the Russian National Settlement Depository (NSD).
Providing opportunities to midcap companies
In July 2020, the AIX launched the Regional Equity Market Segment (REMS) to provide medium-sized businesses in Kazakhstan and Central Asia with better access to equity financing.
AIX has simplified the regulatory regime for companies with a free-float market capitalization not exceeding USD200 million and to allow a simplified prospectus based on one-year financials with no requirement to demonstrate revenue earning track record.
Remote Working
In March 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic AIX took a number of measures in order to minimize the risks to the health of employees while at the same time ensuring smooth operations. Following the latest set of measures taken by Kazakh authorities in relation to the outbreak, AIX introduced a hybrid model of work, giving employees the option to choose a combination of remote and office-based work. Most of the activities of the Exchange have gone from offline to online. The AIX has been able to switch investment forums and investor days to a webcast format that allows to reach a wider investor audience. Investors have welcomed the online option, as they get all the information they need about issuers, economic reviews and first-hand material on measures taken by the government quickly and efficiently. AIX continues to act as the link between current and potential issuers in Kazakhstan, government agencies, the regulator and the foreign investment community.
Future plans
There are three broad priorities for us in 2021.
One of them is to grow the investor base, particularly retail investor base in Kazakhstan. We’ve seen large number of retail investors entering markets around the world and we’ve got the right mobile application – Tabys and a product set which is a range of exchange traded notes which we added this year to be attractive to those retail investors. Secondly, we want to grow the number of issuances at AIX. We’ll continue to focus on fixed income issuers and we see strong demand there. We also have got a segment or the market place for pre-IPO listings as the companies will take two or three years to be ready for an equity listing or raising equity capital we will continue to work with them to grow the pipeline.
Thirdly, we are focused on developing the junior mining market in Kazakhstan, with a dedicated market segment and building up an ecosystem of brokers and advisors to connect with different types of projects and investors. We launched an investment portal www.aixmining.kz for foreign investors with an interest in Kazakhstan and for project owners to make sure they put there best foot forward in terms of attracting foreign capital.
Yearbook 2020