_BIOGRAPHY A seasoned banking executive and one of the few women leading a major state-owned institution in Central Asia, Kammuna Irisbekova has served as Chair of the Board of Aloqabank for 18 years, overseeing the bank's full digital transformation and its expanding international partnerships.

“THE INVESTORS WHO ARRIVE DURING THE COMING YEARS WILL HELP DECIDE WHAT THIS COUNTRY BECOMES. THOSE WHO WAIT WILL ARRIVE TO FIND THE MOST INTERESTING DECISIONS ALREADY TAKEN.”

ALOQABANK AIMS TO BECOME A MARKET-LEADING IT COMPANY. WHICH MILESTONES TELL YOU THE TRANSFORMATION IS SUCCEEDING?

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The branch we built in a provincial town in 1995 used to be busy from the moment it opened. A farmer would queue at the counter to pay his utility bill. That was the architecture of Uzbek banking for a generation. Today those same customers pay from their phones, and they do it without thinking. When customer behaviour changes that completely, you know the transformation is real. The strategy documents only catch up later. Zoomrad, our digital product, serves more than five million users.

It handles over three hundred categories of online payment, from electricity bills and university tuition to foreign exchange and the administrative fees for the Hajj. Around 98% of our deposits now move through the application. A bank founded in 1994 around a national network of service centres has become, for most of its customers, something they hold in their hand.

The speed of the whole institution has compressed. A new product used to take six to nine months of committee meetings. Today it takes six to eight weeks. Engineers and product people sit in the same room and decide together. Open banking connections and APIs are live. Face ID onboarding runs alongside embedded lending and integrated savings. A dedicated AI Lab pulls dozens of separate projects into one disciplined programme so the useful ones scale across the institution.

The milestone I return to most often is Aloqa Ventures. We launched it in 2021 as the first corporate venture fund set up by any bank in Uzbekistan. By the third quarter of 2025 it had backed over 50 companies and invested $5.6 million across fintech, artificial intelligence, adtech, medtech and industrial safety. Billz, YOTO, zypl.ai, Azma Finance, Cradle Vision Tech and Kinestex are in the portfolio. We have also brought foreign founders into the country, CEREBRA and CARGON among them.

Three of our portfolio startups received follow-on investment from IT Park Ventures at the GCC-Uzbekistan Digital and Tech Forum in Samarkand. AloqaTech Lab, the three-month accelerator we run with IT Park Uzbekistan, takes them from an idea to a pilot running inside the bank itself.

FITCH’S 2024 RATING PLACED ALOQABANK AT SOVEREIGN LEVEL. HOW HAS THAT CHANGED YOUR INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS?

A credit rating is the shortest possible summary of years of work, and it arrives in the inboxes of several thousand institutional investors on the same morning. When Fitch assigned Aloqabank BB- in July 2024, the detail that mattered was where it placed us. Level with the sovereign. That was a recognition of the bank’s systemic role and of the institutional support standing behind it.

For anyone who has spent years explaining the fundamentals of an Uzbek bank to counterparties in London or Frankfurt, having an independent agency do that work in a two-page note changes how every subsequent conversation begins.

The more consequential moment came eleven months later. In June 2025, Fitch upgraded Uzbekistan’s sovereign rating to BB and Aloqabank moved with it. The upgrade reflected a reform programme that has been patient and consistent. Macroeconomic management has tightened. The business environment has continued opening to private and foreign capital during years when most economies have been closing to it.

The effects were immediate. International partners had a benchmark they trusted, and meetings no longer opened with an explanation of our credit standing. Terms improved. The correspondent network widened. Development finance institutions and major international banks that had previously taken a slow and cautious approach began to engage earlier and more substantively. Trade finance broadened in parallel.

As of 2026, the rating stands at BB with a stable outlook. Fitch has also maintained Aloqabank’s BB Government Support Rating, grounded in majority state ownership and a consistent record of capital backing. Agencies describe what already exists. They do not create it. Our work now is to put the upgrade to use while it is fresh.

UZBEKISTAN’S BANKING MARKET IS GROWING 20–30% ANNUALLY. WHAT IS ALOQABANK’S STRATEGY, AND WHICH CHANNELS WILL LEAD?

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The pace of adoption tells the story. A joint survey by the Central Bank and the Asian Development Bank found that 72 percent of the population used digital payments in 2025, up from 39 percent in 2021. Total banking assets reached $73.5 billion as of January 2026, growing by more than 20 percent in a single year. Consumer lending expanded by 51 percent in 2025 alone. POS-terminal transactions reached 360 trillion soums in the first ten months of the year.

Behind each number sits a decision made by a shopkeeper in Samarkand or a logistics manager in Tashkent, and there are 38 million of them. Our strategy is simple in ambition and difficult in execution. We want to be the first thing our customers open on their phone in the morning and the last thing they check at night. Product catalogue length and branch density are yesterday's metrics of competition. They describe a market that no longer exists.

In retail, Zoomrad is the engine. It handles payments, transfers, savings, deposits, lending and a widening set of services that go beyond banking. Competition now turns on frequency of use and on the quality of the experience a customer has on a Tuesday evening when they are tired. Branches still matter for advice and complex transactions, but the center of gravity has moved into the phone.

The MSME segment is where the structural opportunity is largest. Small business owners want tools that give them back an afternoon. Onboarding has to be fast and almost entirely remote. Payments, cash management, acquiring, working capital finance: all of it has to be accessible without a branch visit and without a queue. We are also building open banking connections so a retailer running an inventory system can pull banking functions into the environment where work already happens.

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In the corporate segment, relationships remain more structured, but the expectation is the same: faster decisions and software clean enough to connect with the client’s own systems. The bank that treats a corporate client the way a software company treats a heavy user is the bank that will hold those relationships when loyalty stops being free.

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AS UZBEKISTAN MARKS 35 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE, WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE TO INTERNATIONAL INVESTORS?

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Thirty-five years is a particular kind of threshold. It is long enough for a country to have built institutions and developed a clear sense of what it wants to become. It is also recent enough that the most important decisions about Uzbekistan’s future are still being taken.

The economic record is where any serious investor begins. Uzbekistan delivered GDP growth of 7.7 percent in 2025, sustaining a pace of 6 to 8 percent through a period in which the global economy offered little predictability. The country climbed from 69th to 63rd place in the UN E-Government Development Index between 2022 and 2024, with an EGDI score of 0.79 that exceeds the average for its income group. Internet penetration reached 89 percent of the population as of January 2025, with mobile broadband covering 99 percent of settlements by year's end. Digital payment adoption nearly doubled in four years. IT services exports reached $1 billion for the first time in 2025. None of those are projections. They describe a market that has already completed much of its transition.

For international investors, the combination on offer here is rare. A reform-oriented government. A young and growing population of 38 million, adding roughly 700,000 people each year. A digital economy moving faster than most of its neighbors. A banking system now rated BB alongside the sovereign, with independent institutions confirming what the government itself has been saying for years. Each element would be compelling on its own.

Together they describe a country that will help determine how Central Asia looks in 2035.Aloqabank stands inside that story. We are a state-backed institution with the stability that implies, and we are a digital-first bank working alongside founders and international counterparties on the country’s next phase.

My message is as plain as I can make it. The investors who arrive during the coming years will help decide what this country becomes. Those who wait will arrive to find the most interesting decisions already taken. That is as honest as I can put it.