In 2025, the topic of passive income no longer sounds like a trendy slogan but rather a practical necessity: interest rates are changing, market rules are regularly adjusted, and people need to live in the moment while also thinking about retirement. Against this backdrop, the perspective of those who work daily with clients’ money and simultaneously build their own long-term plans is especially intriguing. One such professional is Iskandar Rameev, the recipient of the “Economist of the Year – 2024” award and the Director of Investment Products at Alfa Bank.
His approach to the topic has been shaped not only within the banking sector. The first significant stage of Iskandar’s career was his service in the police: from the age of 22, he worked in the economic security department. There, he had to analyze financial schemes from the standpoint of compliance and violations, and it quickly became clear that “unexplainable high returns” almost always indicate increased risk for those investing money. In 2022, Rameev joined Alfa Bank in an entry-level position in customer service and then advanced to a role where he oversees a range of investment and insurance products, manages a team, and develops business solutions. Concurrently, he is involved in the development of services like “Netmoney,” which clearly illustrate how people’s behaviors are changing in the realm of digital payments.
In 2025, the topic of passive income no longer sounds like a trendy slogan but rather a practical necessity: interest rates are changing, market rules are regularly adjusted, and people need to live in the moment while also thinking about retirement. Against this backdrop, the perspective of those who work daily with clients’ money and simultaneously build their own long-term plans is especially intriguing. One such professional is Iskandar Rameev, the recipient of the “Economist of the Year – 2024” award and the Director of Investment Products at Alfa Bank.
His approach to the topic has been shaped not only within the banking sector. The first significant stage of Iskandar’s career was his service in the police: from the age of 25, he worked in the economic security department. There, he had to analyze financial schemes from the standpoint of compliance and violations, and it quickly became clear that “unexplainable high returns” almost always indicate increased risk for those investing money. In 2022, Rameev joined Alfa Bank in an entry-level position in customer service and then advanced to a role where he oversees a range of investment and insurance products, manages a team, and develops business solutions. Concurrently, he is involved in the development of services like “Netmoney,” which clearly illustrate how people’s behaviors are changing in the realm of digital payments.
Iskandar considers long-term pension solutions to be the third pillar: non-state pension funds and long-term savings programs. In this segment, he pays attention not only to the stated yield but also to the formalized terms: payment procedures, protection mechanisms, and inheritance rules. In the long run, the stability and transparency of the scheme, in his observations, often prove more important than the struggle for the highest interest rate.
At the same time, the instruments familiar to many do not disappear; they simply reside at a different level of the hierarchy. In Rameev’s model, a bank deposit is part of a reserve and a tool for short-term needs, not the main driver of capital over a twenty- to thirty-year horizon. While the key rate is high, deposits appear attractive, but when it decreases, the yield on deposits automatically shrinks. If a long-term plan is built solely around deposits, the financial future becomes tightly tied to the regulator’s decisions.
Iskandar is even more cautious with real estate. Buying an apartment “to rent out” often turns into a separate business project: finding and replacing tenants, repairs, taxes, and household chores. For someone starting with small sums and unwilling to invest time in it, calling this model passive income is, in his opinion, inaccurate.
Rameev views cryptocurrencies and similar assets as an additional layer, not the foundation of his strategy. High volatility and dependence on news make this asset class unpredictable in the short term. In his framework, crypto assets can only be a small part of a portfolio—with a predetermined amount of risk a person is willing to accept if things go wrong. He doesn’t consider such an instrument as a basis for a future pension.
Iskandar cites digital financial assets as a more complex, but promising, area for private investors. Digital financial assets allow for direct participation in the financing of specific projects—from consumer brands to real-world companies. The potential return here is higher than with traditional bonds, but the likelihood of an unfavorable scenario is also significant. According to Rameev, this instrument is suitable for those willing to delve into the documents, analyze the issuer, and follow news on a specific issue. For them, digital financial instruments can serve as an add-on to the underlying portfolio, rather than a replacement for simple and straightforward solutions.
Iskandar’s own investment portfolio is built on the same principles. He invests part of his capital in private companies, including the wellness brand Re Feel and the lingerie brand Underyou. In these projects, he acts not only as an investor but also as a partner, involved in product development and sales. Rameev attributes the more than doubling of his portfolio companies’ revenue in a year not to a lucky guess, but to systematic work on the business model and operational processes.
Iskandar devotes a significant portion of his time to educational initiatives: public lectures, educational formats, and analysis of basic financial issues. The topics remain highly practical—from the differences between a deposit and an investment product to the meaning of tax breaks and the need to determine an acceptable portfolio drawdown in advance. The logic is simple: the better people understand how instruments work, the less panic and disappointment they experience when the market is volatile. If we boil down his approach to passive income to a sequence of actions, a restrained but effective scenario emerges. First, a safety net is created to last a few months. Then, a person determines a comfortable regular contribution amount and distributes it among basic instruments—a reserve deposit, an individual investment account with stock options, and one or two long-term pension products. After this, as capital and experience accumulate, riskier options can be added to the portfolio: digital financial assets, a small share of cryptocurrency, and participation in private projects. In the context of 2025, when the information landscape and market parameters are changing faster than people’s financial habits, it is precisely this multi-layered structure, according to Iskandar Rameev, that allows conversations about passive income to transform from an abstract goal into a concrete plan.
