Foreign Investors Main Market Access Expanded By Saudi CMA To All Categories

The Capital Market Authority announced that all categories of foreign investors are now allowed to invest directly in the Saudi capital market. This step follows the CMA board’s approval of a new regulatory framework that opens direct access to the Main Market for non-resident foreign investors.

Under the revised rules, every segment of the Saudi capital market becomes available for direct participation by investors from different countries. The amendments aim to widen and diversify the investor base in the Main Market, while also supporting higher capital inflows and increasing liquidity across listed securities.

A key change is the removal of the Qualified Foreign Investor concept in the Main Market. All foreign investors can now trade directly without meeting previous qualification thresholds. This change replaces a system that limited direct entry and removes a major barrier for institutional and individual participants abroad.

The CMA also cancelled the specific regulatory framework that had governed swap agreements. These swaps had allowed non-resident foreign investors to gain only the economic returns of listed securities, without legal ownership. With direct access now permitted, foreign investors can hold shares listed on the Main Market instead of relying on swap structures.

International investors increased their presence in the Saudi capital market before the latest reforms. By the end of the third quarter of 2025, their total ownership exceeded SAR 590 billion, while their holdings in the Main Market alone reached about SAR 519 billion over the same period.

This represented a rise compared with the end of 2024, when international investors owned SAR 498 billion in the Saudi market. The CMA expects that the new regulatory changes will help attract additional foreign investment, building on this upward trend and supporting further development of the Main Market.

Earlier, in July 2025, the CMA approved measures to streamline the process for opening and running investment accounts for selected investor categories. These included natural foreign investors living in one of the Gulf Cooperation Council states, and those who had previously lived in the Kingdom or any GCC country.

That step formed a transitional phase ahead of the latest decision, aiming to strengthen confidence among Main Market participants and reinforce the domestic economy. The current amendments follow a staged approach by the CMA, based on earlier reforms designed to gradually open the capital market to more foreign capital flows.

In October 2025, the CMA published the "Draft Regulatory Framework for Allowing Non-Resident Foreign Investors to Directly Invest in the Main Market" on the Unified Electronic Platform for Consulting the Public and Government Entities (Public Consultation Platform) and on the CMA’s website. Feedback from this consultation helped shape the approved framework.

Through these steps, the CMA seeks to position the Saudi capital market as an international venue that can attract larger volumes of foreign capital. The combination of removing qualification hurdles, ending swap-based access, and simplifying account procedures is intended to make direct investment in the Main Market more accessible and transparent.

With inputs from SPA