Safaricom-backed money market fund Ziidi has attracted nearly half of Kenya’s unit trust investors, revealing the dividend earned from tapping into its M-Pesa customer base.
Ziidi MMF, a partnership between Safaricom and three fund managers — Standard Investment Bank (SIB), ALA Capital Limited and Sanlam Investments East Africa Limited — ended September 2025 with 1.15 million customers, according to data from the telecoms operator.
This represents an estimated 47.9 percent of the 2.4 million individual investors in unit trust schemes as per Capital Markets Authority (CMA) data up to June 2025.
The number of active Ziidi investors has grown by more than twofold, from an estimated 130,000 investors at the end of September 2024.
The MMF’s assets under management (AUM) have grown by the same measure to reach Sh15.1 billion from Sh1.3 billion a year earlier.
Ziidi is, however, dwarfed by larger fund managers in terms of assets, ranking outside the top 10 schemes by AUM according to data available up to June 2025.
As of 30 June, the Sanlam Unit Trust Scheme was the largest collective investment vehicle, with an asset base of Sh113.6 billion and a market share of 19.1 percent.
Other large schemes were CIC (Sh93.3 billion), SIB (Sh77 billion), NCBA (Sh56.5 billion) and Britam (Sh41.1 billion).
Ziidi was ranked in fourteenth with an asset base of Sh10.2 billion, giving it a market share of 1.7 percent.
Other schemes with an asset base of more than Sh10 billion were Absa, Old Mutual, ICEA, Co-op, KCB, Jubilee, Etica and Madison.
Ziidi's growing user base demonstrates the fund's ability to leverage its Safaricom partnership to attract users from the M-Pesa mobile money service.
The MMF is integrated into the mobile money ecosystem, enabling investors to buy and sell units via the M-Pesa mobile application or through its USSD prompt.
The number of active Ziidi customers remains well below those using M-Pesa services, with Safaricom placing the number of its one-month active customers on its mobile money unit at 37.91 million.
This suggests that only around three percent of active M-Pesa customers use Ziidi.
Safaricom earned Sh100 million in revenues from Ziidi, representing about 0.6 percent of the MMF’s Sh15.1 billion asset base.
The telecoms operator does not reveal its earnings percentage from Ziidi or its revenue-sharing criteria with its three fund manager partners.
Ziidi MMF was approved by the CMA on November 27, 2024, after Safaricom dropped an earlier partner, Genghis Capital Limited, following the piloting of a different money market fund known as Mali.
The change resulted in a protracted dispute which saw the investment bank send a protest letter to Safaricom on December 3, following the discreet launch of Ziidi.
Mali was piloted in 2019, with most of the early investors being Safaricom staff.
Since Safaricom dropped Genghis Capital as a partner, the assets under management in the Mali MMF have been under pressure, ending the quarter to June 2025 at Sh2.3 billion.
The collective investment schemes (CIS) sector has continued to grow in recent years, buoyed largely by low capital entry requirements and double-digit returns, which have persisted for most of 2025 before subsiding to the high single digits.
CIS assets under management reached a record Sh596.3 billion at the end of June.
The number of CIS investors ended June at 2,463,491, up from 950,020 in June 2023.
“The number of investors in the various CIS funds has continued to grow steadily over time, buoyed by increasing awareness in the market to save and invest, especially post-Covid era,” CMA said.
“In the last one year, for instance, the number of investors has grown from 1,109,050 in March 2024 to 2,463,491, representing an 81 percent increase.”
