Freedom Holding intends to create a rival to Revolut in the EU banking market - FT

Freedom Holding of Kazakh billionaire Timur Turlov has applied for a license in France, which will allow the financial group to enter the European digital banking market. Freedom intends to scale its Kazakh experience to the European market and compete with giants such as Revolut.

Freedom plans to open a digital bank with a major office in France and applied for a French banking license on June 1, Turloff told the FT. The company aims to attract up to 50 million European customers within three years of receiving the license, offering retail loans, investment products and lifestyle services.

Freedom has long sought ways to enter the EU banking market, but Turlov said other countries have responded "formally," while France has "expressed clear enthusiasm." ACPR, the French financial regulator within the Bank of France, declined to comment.

"In Ma, we serve about half of the [country's] population through one service or another," Turlov said. - We believe that the technology that helped us grow there can do the same in Europe.

The attention from the U.S. regulator should also not be an obstacle to Freedom's entry into the European market, he emphasized.

Freedom Holding's client base is still modest compared to some established European players, the FT points out. Revolut, which Turlov says "has a lot to learn", has more than 70 million customers across Europe, Germany's Trade Republic has 10 million, and Societe Generale's French BoursoBank has just over 8 million.

However, Freedom is growing rapidly: in the last fiscal year, which ended in March, the holding company doubled the number of bank customers. The rapid growth of its business is expected to generate increased interest. Turlov, speaking to the FT, attributed this to Freedom's "cool" product and its long-standing commitment to Kazakhstan. "At the end of the day, I'm sort of a mini version of Elon Musk here," the billionaire said.

In October 2024, Freedom's banking division entered the Tajikistan market, and in November 2025, it received permission from the Kazakh financial regulator to open a subsidiary bank in Georgia. In March, Freedom Holding announced the acquisition of Turkish Bank with a license to operate in Turkey.

On June 1, Freedom Holding announced that the company itself and Turlov, as its CEO and controlling shareholder, had received a so-called Wells Notice - effectively a request for the holding company's position following a multi-year examination of accounting practices - from the SEC in March 2026.

Turlov himself called what is happening a "routine procedure," noting that the SEC sends out "hundreds of such notices each year, including to some of the largest investment banks"(quoted in the FT).

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor