Kazakhstan's National Bank has warned of risks to the quality of auto loans after several years of rapid growth in the segment. In its 2025 financial stability report, the regulator notes that relaxations to the debt-to-income ratio spurred car lending and are creating the conditions for a "delayed deterioration in the quality of this portfolio," the website infohub.kz reports.

In 2025, Kazakh banks issued auto loans worth about 2.4 trillion tenge. That is already comparable to the volume of mortgage lending. Between 2023 and 2025, the auto loan portfolio more than doubled and exceeded 4 trillion tenge. At the same time, 73.1% of the debt is made up of loans with terms of more than five years.

The share of auto loans in the total retail loan portfolio also doubled over three years. At the start of 2023 it stood at about 8%, and by the end of 2025 it had reached 16%. In total, 298,000 car loans were issued last year, up from 245,000 a year earlier and 178,000 in 2023.

At the same time, borrowers increasingly took out loans for more expensive cars. In 2025, banks issued 1.4 trillion tenge for cars worth more than 10 million tenge, or about three-fifths of all lending for the year. Cars costing more than 15 million tenge alone accounted for 50,700 loans worth 627 billion tenge. Lending in this price category grew by 157% over the year. The National Bank notes that such growth may create additional risks for bank portfolios.

Delinquency statistics, however, still look better. The share of auto loans more than 90 days overdue fell from 5% at the start of 2023 to 4.1% by the end of 2025. But the National Bank itself cautions against a one-sided reading of this trend. The share of auto loans written off the balance sheet nearly doubled over the same period, reaching 2.9%, the highest level in the period under review.

Thus, the National Bank sees the main risk not in the current level of delinquency, but in the consequences of rapid growth in lending, longer loan terms and a shift in demand toward more expensive cars. The National Bank notes that growth in auto lending driven by debt-burden relaxations could lead to an accumulation of credit risks.

It was reported earlier that in August 2026 Kazakhs cut back on borrowing to buy real estate and cars. According to a review by the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market (ARDFM), the issuance of new mortgage loans and auto loans fell by more than 16-17% compared with the same period a year earlier.