From Fintech to FIDE: Timur Turlov’s Next Move

In September, Samarkand will host a different kind of chess game, played far beyond the 64 squares.

On September 26, representatives of national chess federations will gather in the ancient Silk Road city to elect the next president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE). Three tickets are running: German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner with International Master Malcolm Pein; WR Chess founder Wadim Rosenstein with businessman Gordon Tang; and the eye-catching pairing of Kazakhstani financier Timur Turlov and five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand.

For the 38-year-old Turlov, the move from finance into international sport may look unlikely. He founded Freedom Finance in 2008, took Freedom Holding Corp. onto Nasdaq in 2019, and grew what began as a brokerage into banking, insurance, payments, telecommunications, and lifestyle services. By 2026, the company's market capitalization had passed $9 billion, and his personal fortune stood at $6.3 billion.

But reading his campaign as a billionaire chasing a hobby misses the point. What Turlov wants to bring to chess is what he spent years building in business: an ecosystem that ties fragmented products, users, and services together.

From a financial ecosystem to the chess world

His involvement did not start with this election. He became president of the Kazakhstan Chess Federation in January 2023, the year the government approved a chess development plan running to 2027. The infrastructure grew fast. Regional offices opened across all 20 regions, support for national teams and young players increased, and the number of tournaments listed in international databases rose from 1,538 in 2023 to 3,853 in 2025.

The change in schools is more striking. Kazakhstan's Chess in Education program now reaches more than 1,500 schools and roughly 60,000 children, with about 2,800 teachers trained. Results followed. Kazakh players won 126 medals at official international competitions in 2023 and 162 in 2025, and in 2024, the women's national team took Olympiad silver for the first time.

None of this is one man's doing; government, schools, coaches, and private partners all contributed. But Kazakhstan is the strongest line on Turlov's FIDE résumé: rather than tell federations what he would change, he points to something already built.

The parallel with his business is clear. Freedom now operates in more than 20 countries, has over 600,000 clients in Europe, and plans a banking license there. It recently won a brokerage license in Turkey, the first broad one granted to a foreign firm there in 34 years, and opened its own bank.

Turlov sees a similar gap in chess: plenty of participants and services, but little connecting them. A player might hold a FIDE profile, accounts on several online platforms, separate tournament registrations, and different ties to federations, coaches, and clubs, none of them connected.

His answer is a global chess account. Under his proposal, a player would have one FIDE digital identity carrying ratings, results, tournament history, and achievements, usable to register for competitions and reach educational resources. Artificial intelligence would help too, from game analysis and coaching to stronger fair-play monitoring. Where FIDE has mostly regulated and organized, Turlov imagines a global service platform for the game.

Why schools matter

Another word runs through his vision, and it sounds far less corporate: children. The International School Chess Federation, set up in 2024, links federations with schools, universities, teachers, and education systems. In 2025, it joined FIDE to run the World Schools Team Championship and an education summit in Washington, and the two bodies declared 2026 the Year of Chess in Education.

The initiative also has a social dimension. By helping schools and national federations introduce chess at relatively low cost, the International School Chess Federation aims to give children from disadvantaged backgrounds access to a game they might otherwise never encounter. That approach could matter most for federations in developing countries and for underserved communities elsewhere.

The logic is simple. World champions create stars, but the mass base of a sport begins when a seven-year-old first sits at a board. That child may never turn professional but could become a coach, an organizer, or a lifelong follower who passes the game on. For a body representing more than 200 federations, that is potentially millions of new participants.
It also explains why Turlov argues FIDE should do more than hand out grants. He wants to give federations the tools to earn their own revenue through sponsorship, digital services, and commercial products, with a basic technology and education toolkit available, regardless of a federation's size.

Alongside those tools, Turlov is also proposing direct money. During the first FIDE presidential debate on September 9, he floated a development fund of more than $6 million for national federations, particularly those with fewer resources, covering open tournaments, training for arbiters and coaches, and support for players competing at home and abroad.

A financier's next move

The race is open. Buettner, once involved in AOL Europe and more recently in Freestyle Chess with Magnus Carlsen, emphasizes investment, sponsorship, and new formats. Rosenstein, the WR Chess founder behind the WR Chess Masters, is campaigning for stronger governance and commercial operations. Three businessmen chasing a century-old body say much about the moment.

FIDE was founded in Paris in 1924. A century on, chess competes for attention against video games, esports, and short-form video, even as online platforms have made it a mainstream digital product. The election asks more than who gets the job: what should FIDE become over the next decade?

The Anand choice captures the tension: one man speaks the language of technology and platforms, the other carries the tradition and stature of the game. FIDE's president is elected by member federations, one secret vote each, majority wins, so even the boldest vision must become votes.

Turlov can already point to two working examples: Freedom Holding and Kazakh chess. Samarkand, on September 26, is his attempt at a third act of scaling, and the opening move has only just been played.