The number of Kenyans investing though unit trusts more than doubled to 2.96 million in the 12 months to September, highlighting the surge in awareness and demand for the collective investment products. This was a growth from 1.29 million investors a year earlier.
Latest Capital Markets Authority (CMA) data shows that growth of investor numbers in unit trusts has accelerated this year, partly driven by the rising investment in special funds, which have offered investors an opportunity to diversify their portfolios in a period of falling interest rates.
As investor numbers grow, the collective investment schemes saw their assets under management jump by 115 percent to a record high of Sh679.6 billion at the end of September 2025, from Sh316.4 billion a year earlier.
The CMA also attributed the sharp growth in assets under management and investor numbers to concerted marketing efforts through various digital channels by unit trust providers, whose numbers have also gone up as the regulator continues to license more players in the industry.
By the end of September, there were 55 approved collective investment schemes—41 of which were active— offering 234 funds.
“The number of investors in the various collective investment scheme funds has continued to grow steadily over time, buoyed by increasing awareness in the market to save and invest especially, post-Covid era,” said the CMA in the report.
“The industry has seen heightened visibility through aggressive marketing and investor education.”
Unit trusts are a form of collective investment in which investor funds are pooled together and used to purchase a portfolio of financial assets such as bonds, equities, cash deposits, with the beneficial interest in the assets of the trust divided into units.
They have grown in popularity in part due to the fact that they offer investors access to complex local and offshore financial assets, leaning on the expertise of investment professionals employed by the fund operators.
The unit trusts are also fairly liquid assets in terms of entry and exit.
The number of retail investors in the unit trusts is larger than the 1.25 million in the local equities market, despite the asset class only existing for little more than two decades compared to over 60 years for the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE).
Money market funds, which primarily invest in short term government securities and fixed deposits in banks, remain the most popular unit trust products in the market.
At the end of September, the money market funds had Sh400 billion in assets under management, accounting for 59 percent of the industry total.
Their dominance has however been eroded by fixed income funds and special funds since the beginning of the year, when the money market funds accounted for 63 percent of the industry’s Sh389.2 billion assets under management.
The share of special funds and fixed income funds has grown to 20.3 percent and 20.1 percent from 18 percent and 17 percent respectively in the year to date, eating into the value of investments put into money market funds.
A growing number of unit trust providers have been offering offshore and foreign currency denominated products on their portfolios to meet investor demands for diversification of assets and hedges against future economic shocks.
The assets under special funds climbed to Sh137.8 billion in September, up from Sh70.4 billion in December 2024, while fixed income funds have seen their assets rise from Sh66.8 billion to Sh136.8 billion in the period.
Since the beginning of the year, equity funds’ assets rose to Sh3.3 billion from Sh2.5 billion, while balanced funds contracted from Sh2.22 billion to Sh1.7 billion.
