Timur Turlov is the founder and majority shareholder of Freedom Holding Corp. (FRHC on NASDAQ), a major fintech company in Central Asia, with a 66.46% ownership stake. The Kazakhstani entrepreneur is among the world’s wealthiest individuals: as of the end of September 2026, his personal net worth was estimated at $7.3 billion by Forbes. The owner of Freedom Holding ranks sixth among Kazakhstan’s wealthiest businesspeople.
Timur Turlov is currently 38 years old and has devoted 17 of those years to building and developing his business. At the end of 2025, he was included in the top ten of Forbes’ special 40 Under 40 ranking, which features self-made billionaires under the age of 40—those who built their fortunes themselves rather than inheriting them.
Freedom Holding Corp., owned by Timur Turlov, is a diversified financial and technology corporation founded in 2008. The holding company’s parent entity is incorporated in the state of Nevada, USA, while its headquarters are located in Almaty, where Turlov himself is also a permanent resident.
Freedom Holding Corp.’s core business consists of brokerage, banking, and insurance operations. Over the past five years, however, the company has significantly diversified its business, expanding its range of services and evolving into an integrated ecosystem of digital services. Freedom is among the largest companies in the Central Asian region. Its subsidiaries operate in 24 countries.
Timur Turlov’s net worth
The main driver of the growth in Timur Turlov’s personal wealth has been the significant increase in the value of his stake in Freedom Holding Corp.: over seven years, the company’s share price has risen more than 13-fold.
When assessing the wealth of entrepreneurs, Forbes bases its estimates on the market value of their assets. How does this work?
As of September 29, 2026, just under 63.8 million Freedom Holding shares were outstanding – the exact figure reported in the company’s latest quarterly report. If the share price on that day was $171.09 (as of 5:00 p.m. Moscow time), all of the company’s shares were worth approximately $10.91 billion. This figure represents FRHC’s market capitalization. Timur Turlov owns a 66.46% stake in the company, meaning that as of the calculation date, his stake was worth just under $7.3 billion.
Accordingly, Turlov’s personal wealth, calculated using the Forbes methodology, amounted to $7.3 billion as of 5:00 p.m. Moscow time on September 29, 2026. Because the estimate is tied to the company’s market price, it is recalculated daily: any change in the share price directly affects the estimated value of the entrepreneur’s wealth.
What is known about the billionaire’s personal life
Timur Turlov has lived in Kazakhstan, in Almaty, since 2012, together with his wife, Yelena, and their children. The family has a private house in a green area of the city. Timur and Yelena have been married for 18 years – they met while studying at the Moscow Aviation Technological University. “I am the president at work, and she is the president at home,” Turlov said in an interview, describing how responsibilities are divided in their family. Yelena takes care of the household and the children, as well as organizing family life and trips. “At work, I make almost all the decisions, but at home, my wife makes most of the decisions. I don’t have a say, for example, when it comes to vacations, the children’s extracurricular activities, or choosing a home. That is her area of responsibility, and I trust her,” the owner of Freedom Holding said in another interview. One of the Turlovs’ favorite ways to spend time together is traveling to the mountains.
Timur Turlov is known to advocate fostering independence and developing financial literacy from an early age. He believes that children should be given opportunities for self-realization rather than a ready-made financial fortune. One of Turlov’s sons, also named Timur, began investing independently in the stock market at an early age, following his father’s example. He now has a diversified portfolio that includes shares of major global technology companies as well as “evergreen” assets such as precious metals. He is also interested in artificial intelligence technologies.
The entrepreneur has repeatedly said that family and home are extremely important to him. “Family is your foundation, your balance, and your place to rest. If you don’t want to go home, something is wrong,” he said.
How the financier’s career developed
Timur Turlov first tried his hand at trading and investing at the age of 15. At first, he viewed the stock market primarily as a way to make money quickly.
“I wanted to get rich throughout my childhood. That was the key dream around which everything else revolved. So when choosing a profession, I cynically asked myself: where can I make the most money?” Turlov recalled.
His dream of “getting rich” was rooted in the difficult financial circumstances of the family in which he grew up: his mother raised two children on her own while juggling several low-paid jobs.
Turlov’s first stock market transaction was the purchase of shares in Dalenergo. He invested all the money he had – $800 he had inherited from his grandfather. The investment did not generate a profit, but it gave the young investor valuable experience: financial decisions should be made with a cool head, and quick results should not be expected.
At the age of 16, while still in school, Turlov got a job as a trader at the local office of World Capital Investments, an international company involved in organizing trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Later, after enrolling in the Faculty of Economics and Management at the K.E. Tsiolkovsky Russian State Technological University (MATI), he continued to gain practical experience in the stock market while studying and working at Utrade, a brokerage firm and subsidiary of the major Uniastrum Bank. It was also during this period that the young trader recognized the value of retail clients to the brokerage business and first articulated what was needed to gain a competitive advantage in the market: “They needed an adviser to a much greater extent than they needed infrastructure alone.”
In 2008, at the height of the global financial crisis, Uniastrum Bank was sold, and Utrade was shut down. Turlov was left without a job. Together with other unemployed colleagues from his department, he set up a new brokerage business: the young entrepreneurs pooled their money to buy a small LLC, investing their severance payments in the venture—around $100,000 in total.
In 2011, the company founded by Turlov and his partners was named Freedom Finance Investment Company. That same year, the entrepreneur visited Kazakhstan for the first time and decided to try doing business there.
“I came here, and even then I was impressed by the high level of the local banking system, the absence of restrictions on investing in foreign assets, and the relatively affluent market. I remember driving along Al-Farabi Avenue and seeing billboards advertising Bentley and Breguet. I was struck by the fact that luxury watches were being advertised on outdoor billboards. I realized that there were clearly many wealthy clients here and few competitors like us,” Timur Turlov recalled.
In 2012, he acquired Seven Rivers Capital in Almaty. In 2013, the company was renamed Freedom Finance JSC. At the same time, Freedom Finance expanded its brokerage operations into other countries, including Cyprus and Eastern Europe. By 2014, the company had become one of the key participants in the largest deal on the Kazakhstani market at the time—the “people’s IPO” of Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC).
By 2015, Freedom had become a leading player in Kazakhstan’s financial intermediary market. The company’s access to the U.S. stock market and focus on retail clients enabled it to begin actively expanding its business, both geographically and across different sectors.
How Freedom Finance became Freedom Holding Corp.
The consolidation of Freedom’s assets began in 2015. That year, Turlov acquired the small Sakhalin-based Okhabank, which was later renamed Freedom Finance Bank. The financial institution obtained a banking license in Kazakhstan. It was around this bank that the structure of Turlov’s future holding company began to take shape.
That same year, Freedom Finance acquired U.S. oil and gas company BMB Munai, a former Kazakhstani entity incorporated in the state of Nevada. Turlov’s other assets were subsequently transferred to the company one after another. The expanded company was then renamed Freedom Holding Corp.
In 2019, Freedom Holding Corp. went public: on October 15, its shares began trading under the ticker FRHC on NASDAQ, the U.S. technology-focused stock exchange. Before its direct listing on NASDAQ, Freedom’s shares traded on the OTCQX Best Market over-the-counter platform. Shortly before the NASDAQ listing, analysts valued the company at $801.7 million. The initial FRHC share price at the IPO was $14.40.
In 2020, Freedom Holding Corp. acquired 100% of the shares of Kazakhstan’s Kassa Nova Bank, which was subsequently merged into the existing Freedom Finance Bank. The combined bank was renamed Freedom Bank Kazakhstan (Freedom Bank Kazakhstan JSC). This entity became the center of Freedom’s emerging ecosystem, the development of which would become a central focus of the company’s subsequent growth.
The new strategy involved systematically acquiring leaders in adjacent industries, ranging from insurance, e-commerce, and lifestyle services to advanced IT, telecommunications, and critical information infrastructure. As a result, within five to seven years, the retail brokerage firm had transformed into a diversified holding company: it successfully integrated a broad range of services into a unified customer environment, addressing virtually all of its clients’ needs.
The ecosystem was fully structured in 2024 with the launch of the Freedom SuperApp, which brought all of the holding’s services and offerings together on a single platform. This cemented Freedom’s position as a leading fintech player in the Central Asian region.
Timur Turlov in public life: Chess, social and charitable projects
The businessman has been passionate about chess since childhood. He has played since the age of five, although he has never competed professionally. Turlov actively supports the development of chess in Kazakhstan. In 2023, he became chairman of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, while his company has for many years organized and supported chess tournaments, including international events. Over three years, Freedom Holding allocated $75 million to promote chess in Kazakhstan and support initiatives of the global chess community through FIDE.
In April 2026, Freedom Holding Corp. acquired ChessBase, a leader in chess software development, with €5 million in planned investment in the platform’s development.
On September 26, 2026, Timur Turlov was elected the new president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). One of his key ideas is to turn the Federation into a global digital service platform for chess players and national chess organizations. He has also proposed establishing a $7 million FIDE development fund to provide financial support to national chess federations in poorer regions, train arbiters, and organize tournaments.
Other sports initiatives supported by the businessman include football in Kazakhstan, including the creation and funding of the youth QJ League and the acquisition of Karaganda-based FC Shakhter.
Turlov and his company also support social and educational initiatives, serving as partners and curators of projects such as the IQanat educational foundation, the Teach for Qazaqstan program, and the Qalam historical and cultural project. Environmental programs are also among their priorities, including the Oasis project to plant black saxaul in the Kyzylorda Region.
“When you have resources, you can do something useful for society. It is not a burden but an opportunity,” the entrepreneur says.
How Turlov became a citizen of Kazakhstan
Timur Turlov was born in Moscow in 1987 and spent his childhood in the Moscow Region town of Lobnya. Since 2012, he has lived permanently in Kazakhstan with his family. He was drawn to the country not only by business opportunities but also by his personal perception of it as a place he could call home.
“One of the reasons I moved here back in 2011 was the amazingly friendly people, who made me feel at home right away. From the very first day, I felt much better here than anywhere else. And in that sense, I had the feeling that I had come home,” he said in an interview.
Since 2022, Turlov has held only one passport – that of the Republic of Kazakhstan. To obtain it, he renounced both his Russian citizenship and his passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis, as Kazakhstan’s laws prohibit dual citizenship.
“I am proud to become a citizen of Kazakhstan,” the owner of Freedom Holding said at the time. According to Turlov, he sees his future exclusively in Kazakhstan: his family, children, and friends live there; the headquarters of his corporation are located there; and it is in Kazakhstan’s economy that he intends to invest his money in order to make it as modern, diversified, and internationally competitive as possible.
The businessman has also said that he does not own real estate in other countries. “There are no castles, not even run-down ones. I could probably afford to buy a villa. But I would rather spend that money on things that are genuinely interesting,” he said.
How Timur Turlov’s wealth has changed
The size of Timur Turlov’s personal wealth is directly tied to the market capitalization of his company and, in effect, changes every minute along with FRHC’s share price. However, the trend of rapid growth is steady and clearly visible. According to Forbes, the businessman’s wealth stood at $2.1 billion in 2021, $2.4 billion in 2022 (despite numerous challenges associated with exiting Russian assets), $3.1 billion in 2023, and $3.3 billion in 2024. In 2025, it rose sharply to $5.8 billion. This was driven by a substantial increase in the market capitalization of Freedom Holding Corp. following the transformation of the company’s business model into a full-fledged ecosystem, which significantly increased its margins.
While Freedom Holding was valued at $801.7 million as of October 2019, the company’s market capitalization reached $2 billion by November 2020. By the fifth anniversary of its NASDAQ listing in October 2024, Freedom’s market capitalization had exceeded $6 billion. In the first half of 2026, the figure surpassed the $10 billion mark, reaching $10.7–11.3 billion.
The company’s financial results also point to a sustained growth trend, even amid high investment costs. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027 (ended June 30, 2026), Freedom Holding Corp. reported revenue of $732.5 million, up 40% year over year. The holding’s total assets reached $14.05 billion, up 7% quarter over quarter. The number of banking clients increased by 8% to 5.4 million, while the number of brokerage accounts grew by 2% to 874,000. Across the other segments combined, the client base grew by 36% to 1.5 million. As of September, the Freedom SuperApp had 6 million users, while the total number of clients across the Freedom ecosystem exceeded 14 million.
In July 2026, Freedom Holding’s Turkish subsidiary, Freedom Finansal Hizmetler A.Ş., acquired a 99.32% stake in Turkey’s Turkish Bank. The bank is expected to become the center of the digital infrastructure for Freedom’s emerging ecosystem in the country. A similar approach will be used in other countries, including Georgia, where the local regulator has already approved the establishment of a new credit institution from the ground up. Freedom is also expected to obtain a banking license in France.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Timur Turlov’s net worth?
Currently, $7.3 billion.
Is Timur Turlov married?
Turlov has been married to his course mate, Yelena, since 2008.
How many children does Timur Turlov have?
Six—three boys and three girls.
Who are Timur Turlov’s parents?
His mother is a researcher. She raised Timur and his brother on her own after their father left the family when Timur was young; Timur barely remembers him.
What is Timur Turlov’s religion?
He is an Orthodox Christian, attends church, and celebrates religious holidays with his family.
How tall is Timur Turlov?
He is tall – 6 feet 6 inches.
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