AIFC regulator AFSA appoints ex-ING executive Saida Djarbolova to its board

Saida Djarbolova has joined the board of the Astana Financial Services Authority (AFSA), the regulator of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), as an independent non-executive director, effective 5 September, AFSA said on 8 September.

The appointment was approved by an AIFC Governor's Order. She sits on the board's nomination and remuneration committee and on its audit and risk committee.

AFSA said Djarbolova has more than three decades of international experience in banking, corporate finance and strategic transformation across Europe and Central Asia. She spent over two decades in senior roles at ING Group, including head of transformation for the EMEA region, chief executive of ING Bank Ukraine and country head of ING Kazakhstan, the release said. She currently serves as an independent non-executive director at a Kazakh financial institution and at a UK-listed company, neither of which AFSA named.

AIFC Governor Renat Bekturov said she joins "a dedicated, well-rounded, and highly professional group of directors", in a statement released by AFSA.

Djarbolova's appointment is the second independent one since May. On 25 May AFSA announced that Phang Hong Lim had been appointed an independent non-executive director and chair of the audit and risk committee, effective 23 May, after the Governor approved the decision on 22 May, the regulator said. Mukhtar Bubeyev, previously chair of that committee, left the board when his term expired, after nine years with the AIFC. Board chairperson Angela Knight CBE said Lim's appointment "enhances the Board's geographic diversity".

AFSA's board sets the regulator's strategic direction, adopts its regulatory acts and oversees its executive body, and is accountable to the AIFC Management Council, according to the 2025 annual report. The report, published on 21 May, listed five directors: Knight, Gregory Tanzer, Bubeyev, Rashid Gaissin and Bryan Stirewalt. Four of the five were described as independent non-executives, and Bubeyev as a non-executive.

The two appointments announced since then and Bubeyev's departure imply a board of six, all described as independent non-executive directors, if no other changes have occurred. Neither announcement gives the total. AFSA was launched on 1 January 2018 as the independent regulator of the AIFC and is a statutory body of Kazakhstan, its website says. It administers the AIFC regulations and rules and is responsible for authorising, registering and supervising financial firms and market institutions in the centre, the release adds.