Three fund managers earned Sh1.09 billion in investment management fees for overseeing the externally managed assets of State-controlled National Social Security Fund (NSSF) in the year to June 2025, latest disclosures by the fund show.
The fees were shared by GenAfrica Asset Managers Limited, African Alliance Kenya Asset Management Limited and Co-optrust Investment Services Limited, which managed a combined portfolio of Sh517.96 billion for the NSSF.
The fees represented an increase of 59.8 percent from the Sh686.88 million the NSSF shelled out to fund managers in the previous year, highlighting the faster pace of growth in its investment assets in the period, courtesy of enhanced statutory deductions after the implementation of the NSSF Act 2013 from February 2023 after a decade-long court battle.
The fund said in its latest financial disclosures contained in the Kenya Gazette that its investment assets stood at Sh588.05 billion as at June 2025, up from Sh389.71 billion in June 2024.
Out of these assets, Sh517.96 billion was managed externally by the three fund managers and Sh40.08 billion by the NSSF itself. The fees thus implied a 0.21 percent charge by the private fund managers on managing the NSSF’s assets.
In June 2024, external funds managed investment assets worth Sh348.7 billion for NSSF, with the fees for the period translating to a charge of 0.2 percent.
Separate disclosures by the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) showed that GenAfrica accounted for the largest share of the externally managed assets at Sh177.78 billion as at June 2025, followed closely by Co-optrust Investment at Sh177.3 billion, and African Alliance at Sh162.88 billion.
The NSSF traditionally recruits external fund managers every three years and assesses their performance annually to confirm whether they offer satisfactory services before renewal.
The last such review in mid-2024 saw the fund drop three fund managers —Old Mutual Investment Group Limited, Sanlam Investments East Africa Limited and CIC Asset Management Limited— from the list of investment service providers, with their allocations redistributed among the current three active funds.
In June 2024, Old Mutual Investment was managing Sh62.35 billion worth of assets for NSSF, while Sanlam Investments and CIC Asset Management were overseeing Sh36.18 billion and Sh37.43 billion respectively.
Co-optrust Investment was the biggest beneficiary of the reallocation, seeing its base of NSSF-managed assets rise by Sh113.3 billion in the year to June 2025, with GenAfrica’s going up to Sh106.9 billion and African Alliance at Sh84.97 billion.
In addition to the reallocations from the discontinued contracts, the three fund managers were also looking after the NSSF’s expanded cash pile after remitted member contributions jumped to Sh81.9 billion in the year to June 2025 from Sh59.14 billion in 2024.
Overall, the State-controlled pension fund’s net assets (inclusive of the investment assets) rose to Sh572.77 billion in June 2025, from Sh400.2 billion in the previous year.
The enhanced NSSF contributions entered their fourth year of implementation this month, where the highest member contribution to the fund has gone up to Sh6,480 from last year’s ceiling of Sh4,320.
The rapidly expanding investment asset base as a result of the enhanced contribution inflows is therefore expected to yield even higher fee earnings for the contracted fund managers.
