ARDFM requires Kazakhstan banks to report IT infrastructure changes within five days
The Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan for Regulation and Development of Financial Market (ARDFM) introduced a new rule for the banking sector: financial institutions must now notify the regulator of major changes to their digital systems within five working days. The requirement applies to any technological shifts that could disrupt the timely submission of supervisory reports.
Under the new requirements, replacing a bank’s key IT systems triggers mandatory notification. This includes changing digital infrastructure providers, outsourcing platforms to third-party developers, and any alterations to data transmission channels. The regulator intends to receive technical maintenance data before it causes a failure in uploading mandatory reports. The resolution takes effect ten calendar days after its first official publication.
Kazakhstan’s financial sector relies on complex digital architecture, where mobile apps and internal bank processing operate under high loads. Any large-scale data migration or cloud provider switch carries risks of temporarily losing control over transactions. The new requirement closes a supervisory blind spot: ARDFM is protecting itself against situations where a bank temporarily drops off the radar due to internal technical updates.
Introducing strict timing changes the approach to managing technological risks within financial institutions. Banks will have to build a clear interaction process between IT departments and compliance teams so technical specialists inform lawyers about planned architecture changes on time. Tighter infrastructure supervision will spur demand for local regtech products capable of automatically classifying IT incidents and generating reports for the regulator without manual intervention.
In the coming weeks, banks will need to update internal regulations and define clear severity criteria for every technical intervention. This decision fits into the regulator’s broader logic of strengthening market discipline. Finteqstan previously reported that ARDFM tightened requirements for banks returning state aid, raising the threshold from 66% to 100%. Now, the supervisory focus naturally expands from purely financial metrics to the stability of the digital foundation.