Housing Construction Savings Bank of Kazakhstan

Description

The Housing Construction Savings Bank (HCSB), founded in 2003, is modelled on the German bausparen system of contractual savings for housing. It is the only Kazakhstani bank which employs this model to fund mortgage lending.

Actors involved

• Housing Construction Savings Bank of Kazakhstan (HCSBK)

Scale

national

More information

The HCSB contract savings system is operated as follows:

• A saver deposits money with the bank, which earns a below-market rate of interest
• Once a minimum of 50 per cent of the loan required has been saved, the saver can secure a mortgage from the bank.
• The mortgage is offered at a fixed interest rate for the lifetime of the loan and is repayable for a term of up to 25 years.

The bank originally offered a single savings and mortgage product but from 2016 it began to offer a wider variety of products, with the required savings accumulation period varying from 3.5 to 15 years

The bank has made a significant contribution to expanding available mortgage credit.  In 2018 it provided one third of the country’s mortgage finance and its loan book has grown by approximately 33 per cent per annum in recent years.^[1]

[1] UNECE, Country Profiles on the Housing Sector: Republic of Kazakhstan (Geneva, United Nations, 2018). Available at https://unece.org/housing-and-land-management/publications/country-profiles-housing-sector-republic-kazakhstan.