The Financial Market Supervisory Authority of Azerbaijan has ceased to be the financial regulatory authority for that country.

Formed by Presidential Decree on 3 February 2016 out of various departments of the central bank, it supervised the activities of banks, non-bank credit organizations, insurance companies, stock exchanges, securities dealers and other financial intermediaries, took part in prudential supervision, participated in financial legislation and issued licenses to firms. Its functions have now gone back to the Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan (CBAR), which up until recently only had monetary policy to set.

According to a positive report by Moody's in October, FIMSA did much to diminish credit risk in the country and end its dearth of bank-lending. The assets of all Azerbaijani banks combined are only 30.269 billion manats (US$17.84 billion), but the capitalisation of Azerbaijan’s banking sector grew by almost 18% in the year to July 2019. One feather in the former regulator's cap was its extraction of a promise in September by Raiffeisen Bank International (Austria's second largest bank) to give foreign HNW investors access to Azerbaijan's securities market.

At the time, the bank said: "The RBI Group is of course in close communication and co-operation with FIMSA and since recently with the National Depository Centre of the Republic of Azerbaijan (NDC). RBI's Russian subsidiary AO Raiffeisenbank, Moscow, is working on the account opening with NDC. The foreign nominee account is expected to be active in the fourth quarter of 2019, which shall allow foreign investors to access Azerbaijan's securities market."

According to the last account, FIMSA, the NDC and Raiffeisen were working on some kind of standard-setting legislation to go with the deal. Raiffeisen's balance sheet came to €148.6 billion on 30 June last year - a figure that dwarfs the size of the whole Azerbaijani market.