The increase in the minimum sufficiency thresholds for pension savings did not reduce the inflow of funds into «Otbasy Bank». Since the beginning of 2026, the volume of savings has reached 800 billion tenge, and the rate of deposit growth has exceeded 20% compared with 2025.
WHAT OTBASY BANK REPORTED
As reported by the Chairperson of the Management Board, Lazzat Ibragimova, at a Government meeting, the bank has recorded a rise in mortgage applications in July and August. The bank links this process to the admission of Kazakhstani children to universities in major cities.
According to Ibragimova, these are clients who have spent years saving money independently for housing for their children. Such borrowers typically accumulate half of the required amount from their own funds and are not participants in government programmes.
WHY THE NUMBER OF MORTGAGE APPLICATIONS HAS RISEN
The bank notes the so-called «1 September effect». Parents who had built up housing savings in advance use them, in the period before the start of the academic year, to purchase housing for children moving to major cities.
«These are people who have saved for their children for years. When their children are admitted, we now see this flow of regional clients coming to the major cities where our largest universities are located, and they submit credit applications», — said Lazzat Ibragimova.
According to her, most of the funds are used to top up housing construction savings deposits.
HAVE LOAN DECISIONS CHANGED
The share of rejections for credit applications, according to the head of the bank, has remained at the same level. Decisions are made by an automated scoring system that takes into account the applicant's credit history.
Ibragimova stressed that it is impossible to influence the system's decision manually. There is no data in the provided context on the specific number of approved or rejected applications.
CONTEXT
In June 2026, Kazakhstan raised the minimum sufficiency thresholds for pension savings for the second time in a year. The reason was the introduction of a new calculation methodology.
After the change, to use pension surplus funds, a citizen must have a balance in their account no lower than the threshold set for their age. For a 20-year-old Kazakhstani, it is 6.67 million tenge, for a 30-year-old — 9.75 million tenge, and for a 40-year-old — 13.37 million tenge.
If savings are below the corresponding age threshold, they cannot be used.
It should be recalled that earlier, «Otbasy Bank» identified violations with signs of corruption among its employees. According to the bank, this included illegal remuneration for moving clients up the housing queue and the production of forged income documents. Pre-trial investigations are being conducted by law enforcement agencies into the identified facts.
