Kenya's unit trust industry just posted another strong quarter, and the numbers tell a story of an asset class that keeps finding new investors even as returns on some of its most popular products soften. Following the release of the Capital Markets Authority's Q2'2026 Quarterly Collective Investment Schemes report, industry-wide assets under management grew 11.4% quarter-on-quarter to Kshs 948.7 billion, up from Kshs 851.7 billion in Q1'2026, and climbed 59.1% year-on-year from Kshs 596.3 billion a year earlier. Zoom out further and the growth looks even more dramatic: assets under management expanded at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 27.0% to reach Kshs 176.0 billion in Q2'2023, then accelerated to a three-year compound annual growth rate of 75.3% to hit Kshs 948.7 billion by Q2'2026, underlining just how quickly this corner of Kenya's capital markets has captured investor attention.
A big part of that growth story is who's doing the investing. The number of people putting money into collective investment schemes has surged, jumping 68.0% to 4.1 million investors by June 2026, up from 2.5 million a year earlier. Several forces are behind this. Low minimum investment thresholds have opened the door to small savers, since most schemes require initial investments of only Kshs 100 to Kshs 10,000. Mobile money has made moving cash in and out of these funds almost frictionless, and the data backs that up too: registered mobile money accounts grew 12.1% year-on-year to 94.4 million by July 2026, from 84.2 million a year earlier. Add in growing appetite for specialized, sector-specific products, competitive returns relative to bank deposits, and a steady stream of new fund launches, and you get a market that's broadening as fast as it's deepening.
Money market funds are still the biggest single category, but their grip on the industry is loosening. These funds held 48.5% of total assets under management in Q2'2026, a slide from the 62.5% share they commanded a year earlier, even though the actual shillings invested kept rising. The money is going somewhere, and increasingly that somewhere is special funds. This category has genuinely taken off, expanding 24.2% quarter-on-quarter to Kshs 252.8 billion, its fastest growth rate of any fund category, and now accounts for a little over a quarter of total industry assets. Special funds have become the main gateway Kenyan fund managers use to offer clients exposure to offshore markets and alternative assets, since money market funds are restricted by regulation to short-term, domestic instruments. In fact, half of all special funds assets sit offshore, a concentration so heavy that this single category accounts for the vast majority of every offshore shilling and every alternative-asset shilling held across the entire industry.
Interestingly, there's been a changing of the guard at the top of the industry. Standard Investment Trust Fund overtook Sanlam to become Kenya's largest unit trust scheme during the quarter, with its assets under management climbing sharply on the back of strong investor uptake, largely driven by its Mansa-X special fund products, which alone command close to three-quarters of all special funds assets in the country.
On the money market side specifically, returns have been drifting lower even as the funds remain more attractive than bank deposits. The industry's average yield came in below where it stood a quarter earlier, though it still comfortably beat what banks were offering savers. A handful of managers, including Nabo Africa and Cytonn, outperformed the industry average by a wide margin, a reminder that fund selection still matters even within a single asset category.
Step back and compare Kenya's unit trust industry to the rest of the world, and the growth story looks less like a bubble and more like a market catching up from a low base. Kenya's mutual funds to GDP ratio sits well below the global average, and even behind regional peers like South Africa and Namibia. The same pattern shows up in how Kenyan businesses raise money: the overwhelming majority still comes from bank lending rather than capital markets, a stark contrast to more efficient economies where capital markets do the heavier lifting. That gap is really the headline takeaway from this report. Kenya's unit trust funds have grown explosively over the past several years, investor numbers are climbing, and new products keep launching, but the underlying capital markets remain shallow relative to global peers. There's a long runway left before unit trusts, and Kenya's capital markets more broadly, are pulling their full weight in the economy, and that's arguably good news for anyone thinking about where this growth goes next.
