Standard Investment Bank’s MansaX special funds have received International Securities Identification Numbers from the Nairobi Securities Exchange, a step the bank says will make it easier for custodians and overseas institutions to hold and report the products.
At a signing ceremony on the NSE Trading Floor on October 13, the MansaX Special Fund (KES) was assigned ISIN KE9930009213 and the MansaX Shariah Special Fund (KES) received KE9930009437. Both sit under Standard Investment Trust Funds, an umbrella licensed by the Capital Markets Authority as a Special Collective Investment Scheme.
A passport for custody and reporting
ISINs are the standard codes banks and asset managers use to identify securities across borders. Without them, institutional desks often struggle to book, reconcile and report a fund even when they like its strategy.
“For an investment fund, identity matters. An ISIN provides a unique, internationally recognised identifier that enables custodians, banks, institutional investors, asset managers and other financial institutions to identify, hold, reconcile and report their investments more efficiently,” said Nahashon Mungai, SIB executive director for global markets and portfolio manager of the Standard Investment Trust Funds. “It enhances the fund’s visibility and supports its integration into the global financial markets ecosystem.”
From retail base to pensions and family offices
SIB said MansaX now wants to widen its book beyond individual investors to institutions, corporates, pension funds, family offices and international allocators. The bank also cast the ISINs as part of a broader push to align Kenyan investment plumbing with global standards.
“Kenya has significant pools of domestic capital and enormous investment potential. The opportunity is to build the market infrastructure and investment vehicles that can connect these pools of capital to investments both locally and internationally, while enabling Kenya to attract greater participation from global investors,” Mr Mungai said.
Standard Investment Trust Funds also offers USD versions of the special and Shariah funds. SIB credited the NSE, the CMA, trustees, custodians and administrators for supporting the issuance, and said the codes should help MansaX scale its institutional capabilities while keeping the products inside Kenya’s regulated collective-investment framework.
Special collective investment schemes sit in a CMA niche that allows more flexible strategies than ordinary unit trusts, which is why institutional due-diligence teams often ask first for clean identifiers, audited reporting lines and familiar custody arrangements. The new ISINs answer the identifier piece.
SIB thanked the NSE, the CMA and the funds’ trustees, custodians, administrators and advisers for supporting the issuance. For Kenyan savers, the practical test will be whether pension funds and family offices begin to appear on the register — and whether the international codes shorten the onboarding time when an offshore allocator wants exposure to a Nairobi-managed special fund.
Sources: The Star | Standard Investment Bank
Photo: Lebu Ayiga / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
