Seven Pillars KZ Ltd.AIFC · Astana
+7 778 059 1980
We advise. We do not provide financial services, hold client money or open accounts for anyone. Incorporation in the AIFC is company registration; it is not an authorisation from the financial regulator, and it is not a bank account.
Corporate advisory · Astana International Financial Centre

Registering a company takes days.
Explaining it to a bank takes longer.

Seven Pillars KZ Ltd. is a private company in the Astana International Financial Centre. We advise founders and operating businesses on setting up here and on the parts that follow registration — which is where most projects actually stall.

The certificate arrives quickly. Then somebody has to answer, in detail and with documents, what the business does, who owns it and where its money comes from — and a structure built without those answers in mind tends to fail at exactly that point.

The seven questions every serious counterparty will ask
Banks, payment providers, auditors and large customers all ask versions of these. Select one.
Opening an account

What a bank asks — and what makes it stop asking

Expect these questions
  • A plain description of the activity, in ordinary words
  • Identification of the ultimate beneficial owners, not just the director
  • Expected turnover, currencies and payment directions
  • Names of the main customers and suppliers
  • Contracts, invoices or other evidence that the activity is real
  • Where the founders' own funds came from
These stop applications
  • An activity described so broadly it covers everything
  • Ownership that cannot be traced to real people
  • No presence anywhere: no staff, no office, no operations
  • Counterparties in jurisdictions the bank will not touch
  • A story that does not match the documents
  • Reluctance to answer — which reads as an answer
None of this is bureaucracy for its own sake. A bank that onboards a customer it cannot explain carries the consequences itself, which is why the questions get harder rather than easier over time. Preparing the answers before applying is far cheaper than being refused and starting again elsewhere.
What is sold, and should not be bought

Five offers that create the problem

Wherever companies are registered, somebody sells shortcuts around the questions above. Each of these makes the eventual refusal more likely, not less.

Services

What we do

Setting up properly

Choosing a structure that matches what the business will actually do, and preparing the documentation that follows from it.

Preparing for onboarding

Assembling the answers and evidence a bank, auditor or large customer will ask for — before the application, not after a refusal.

Ongoing corporate work

Filings, corporate records, changes to participants and management, and keeping the register entry consistent with reality.

Honest pre-assessment

Telling you when this jurisdiction does not fit the plan, or when the plan needs to change before any structure will work.

What we will not do: act as nominee owner or director for anybody, promise an account or an approval, prepare a description of a business that we do not believe is accurate, or take payment to a personal account. If an engagement depends on any of those, we decline it at the first meeting.
Questions

Asked regularly

i.Does registering in the AIFC make my company regulated?

No. Incorporation is company registration. Authorisation to provide financial services is granted separately by the financial regulator and is recorded in its own register. Firms offering financial services should be checked there, whatever their certificate of incorporation says.

ii.Can you open a bank account for us?

No. Banks open accounts, on their own criteria, after their own checks. What we can do is prepare the file so that the questions have answers and the answers have documents.

iii.How private is ownership?

Ultimate beneficial ownership is disclosed to the authorities under the rules in force. Confidentiality from the general public is not the same as invisibility, and arrangements sold as the second are usually just the first with extra risk attached.

iv.Is this jurisdiction right for us?

Sometimes plainly yes, sometimes plainly no. It depends on what the business does, where its customers are and what its counterparties require. We would rather say no at the start than build something that fails at the bank.

v.How do we start?

Describe the business in plain language: what it sells, to whom, in which currencies and at roughly what volume. That paragraph determines almost everything that follows.

Contact

Send the plain description

What the business does, who owns it and where the money comes from. If those three are clear, the rest is procedure.

Registered officevul. Dinmukhamed Qonaev 12/1, premises 32
Astana, Kazakhstan
Not offeredNominee services, guaranteed accounts, financial services