From Innovation to Market Leader in 8 Years
In June 2026, Standard Investments Trust Funds (SITF), the umbrella fund managing the Mansa-X Special Funds powered by Standard Investment Bank (SIB), reached a defining milestone. Assets under management had risen to KES 188 billion, making SITF the largest Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) in Kenya.
The Capital Markets Authority (CMA) Collective Investment Schemes Quarterly Report for Q2 2026 shows that a 23 percent increase in assets under management during the three months to June propelled Mansa-X to the top of Kenya’s CIS market. With the country’s total CIS market standing at KES 948.7 billion, Mansa-X commanded approximately 20 percent of the entire market.
For Mansa-X, however, the story is bigger than the numbers.
It is a story woven together by innovation and resilience, a regulatory environment willing to accommodate new ideas, and a market that was ready for investment solutions beyond the traditional.
It is a story that began with a simple question: What else can we offer Kenyan investors?
The question that started it all
In 2016, Standard Investment Bank was already an established investment banking institution. The bank had recently advised on the KES 28 billion KenGen Rights Offer through its Corporate Finance Division, one of the landmark transactions in Kenya’s capital markets.
But while SIB was advising some of the country’s largest institutions on complex capital-raising transactions, another opportunity was becoming increasingly apparent.
The investment options available to ordinary investors were relatively concentrated.
Kenya had equity funds, fixed-income funds, government securities, corporate bonds and exposure to listed equities. These were established and familiar investment avenues, but the local market was not always generating the kind of opportunities investors were looking for.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange had gone through a period of limited activity. There were few new IPOs and fewer compelling opportunities capable of generating significant growth.
At SIB, the question became: What can we give investors that provides exposure to other, more lucrative markets?
The answer was to look beyond Kenya.
Looking outward
At around the same time, Kenya’s capital-markets regulator was grappling with another emerging trend: online foreign exchange trading.
Young Kenyans were increasingly participating in global forex markets, but the rapid emergence of online trading also created a need for proper regulation, investor protection and oversight.
The CMA developed The Capital Markets Online Foreign Exchange Trading Regulations of 2017 which introduced different licensing categories, including dealing and non-dealing forex broker licences and a Money Manager licence.
The Money Manager licence created an important possibility: a licensed institution could manage funds on behalf of investors and deploy them into the global online forex market.
SIB became the first institution in Kenya to receive the Money Manager licence.
But SIB did not see the licence simply as an opportunity to enter the forex market.
It saw an opportunity to rethink how investment risk could be managed.
Forex trading can expose investors to considerable volatility. For SIB, risk management therefore had to be at the centre of any investment proposition. The institution’s Board focused on how the capabilities of its existing investment banking business and the new Money Manager licence could be combined to create something more diversified and more resilient.
The result was Mansa-X. The name was inspired by Mansa Musa, of the Mali Empire who is remembered for extraordinary wealth. Yet his enduring lesson is not simply the size of his fortune; it is the vision behind it. His legacy evokes stewardship and the ability to translate opportunity into lasting prosperity.
Building a different kind of fund
Mansa-X was designed as a multi-asset strategy rather than a conventional fund tied to one asset class or one market.
The objective was straightforward: create a vehicle through which Kenyan investors could gain exposure to financial instruments and opportunities beyond Kenya.
Within the strategy, investors could gain exposure to different asset classes, including local and global equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, precious metals and derivatives. The fund could access major global markets, including New York, London, Frankfurt and Hong Kong. But diversification alone was not the defining innovation.
Mansa-X introduced a long-short investment model. A traditional long-only strategy generally performs well when markets rise because the portfolio is positioned to benefit from increasing asset prices. But when markets fall, the same positioning can expose investors to significant losses.
The Mansa-X approach was designed differently. By taking both long and short positions, the strategy could seek opportunities in rising markets while using short positions as part of its hedging and risk-management approach when markets moved in the opposite direction.
The objective was not simply to maximise returns when markets were rising. It was to build a strategy capable of navigating different market conditions. This philosophy became central to Mansa-X: genuine diversification, active management and resilience.
When regulation met innovation
The CMA’s Capital Markets (Collective Investment Schemes) Regulations, 2023 represented a significant overhaul of the country’s CIS framework. Among the reforms was the formal recognition of different fund categories, including Special Funds.
The introduction of Special Funds was particularly important for strategies that did not fit neatly within traditional categories such as money market, equity, fixed income or balanced funds.
The new framework provided a regulatory structure within which sophisticated investment strategies could operate while giving the regulator greater visibility and oversight.
Special Funds were required to clearly define their investment strategy and disclose how the fund would operate through an Information Memorandum. This meant that innovation could take place within a framework of transparency, governance, reporting and regulatory supervision.
For Mansa-X, the development was significant.
What had begun as an innovative investment strategy now had a formal regulatory home.
In August 2024, SIB was granted a licence by the CMA to operate Special Collective Investment Schemes. Mansa-X consequently became the Mansa-X Special Fund in KES and USD, while the Shariah-compliant funds became the Mansa-X Special Shariah Funds.
The creation of Standard Investment Trust Funds provided the umbrella structure for the four funds, separating the fund assets from SIB and establishing a dedicated governance and investment oversight structure.
The four funds were now; Mansa-X Special Fund – KES, Mansa-X Special Fund – USD, Mansa-X Shariah Special Fund – KES, Mansa-X Shariah Special Fund – USD
What had started as an investment idea had become an institutionalised investment platform. The transformation was reflected in the numbers.
Mansa-X then debuted on CMA’s CIS Quarterly report for Q3 2024 ranking 3rd in the Collective Investment Schemes category with KES 34.2 Billion in Assets Under Management (AUM) representing a 10.82% market share.
By then, the fund had already demonstrated that there was significant appetite for a different investment proposition.
Investors were increasingly looking for diversification beyond traditional Kenyan asset classes. They were also becoming more aware of the importance of managing currency risk, accessing global markets and finding strategies capable of navigating periods of volatility. Mansa-X was positioned directly at the intersection of these needs.
The Mansa-X USD Fund broadened the proposition to investors seeking dollar-denominated exposure, including members of the Kenyan diaspora and investors with dollar-based income.
The launch of Mansa-X Shariah expanded the proposition further, giving investors seeking Shariah-compliant solutions access to the same broader philosophy of diversification and global investment.
The Mansa-X platform was no longer serving one type of investor or one type of investment objective. It was becoming an investment ecosystem.
The billion-dollar milestone
By early 2026, the scale of that transformation was becoming impossible to ignore.
In February 2026, Mansa-X Special Funds surpassed USD 1 billion in assets under management across the four fund variants.
The milestone came after a particularly strong year for the fund. In 2025, Mansa-X Special Fund–KES delivered a net return of 20.74 percent, while the USD fund delivered 13.37 percent.
Performance, however, was only one part of the growth story.
The deeper driver was investor confidence in the proposition.The fund had established itself around a clear idea: investors did not have to choose between local familiarity and global opportunity. Through a locally managed and regulated vehicle, they could access a diversified portfolio spanning multiple asset classes and markets.
That proposition was becoming increasingly relevant in a world defined by geopolitical uncertainty, changing interest rates, currency movements and rapidly shifting investment opportunities.
The fund has proved resilient over the past 8 years, wading through uncertainties such as the 2020 Covid Period where markets fell, the Russia-Ukraine War in 2025 as well as the US-Israel invasion of Iran which had a negative impact on markets and supply chains globally.
From challenger to market leader
Then came the defining moment.
By the end of June 2026, SITF had reached KES 188 billion in assets under management.
The wider Kenyan CIS market stood at KES 948.7 billion.
Mansa-X therefore represented approximately one-fifth of the entire industry.
The KES fund accounted for KES 163.8 billion, giving it a 64.8 percent share of the Special CIS category. The USD fund had reached KES 20.6 billion.
The Shariah funds were growing too, reflecting increasing demand for investment products that combine financial objectives with faith-based principles.
The numbers told a remarkable story.
In eight years, Mansa-X had moved from an idea seeking to solve a gap in Kenya’s investment market to the largest CIS in the country.
But perhaps the more significant achievement is what happened along the way.
Mansa-X helped demonstrate that innovation in Kenya’s capital markets does not have to mean simply creating another version of an existing product. It can mean looking at the market differently, asking what investors do not have and looking beyond national borders.
It can mean combining investment banking expertise, global markets capability, technology, risk management and a changing regulatory framework to create something that did not previously exist.
The real story behind KES 188 billion
The KES 188 billion milestone is therefore not simply a story about assets under management.
It is a story about conviction.
SIB saw a market where investment opportunities were concentrated in a relatively narrow range of traditional assets. It saw investors increasingly interested in global opportunities. It saw the emergence of online forex trading and recognised both its potential and its risks.
Instead of simply following the market, SIB asked what could be built.
Mansa-X was the answer. Today, Mansa-X stands at the centre of Kenya’s CIS industry, representing approximately 20 percent of the entire market. Current numbers indicate even more optimism in the market with the firm reporting an AUM of over KES 210 Billion with its client base approaching 90,000.
The story of Mansa-X is not simply the story of a fund that became big. It is the story of an idea that changed what investors could expect from a Kenyan investment product.
The client base represents peoples’ stories of wealth building. Young parents saving towards their child’s education fund, a retiree who has a regular income source or a business managing its liquidity through the Mansa-X Special Fund.
From innovation to resilience. From resilience to scale. From scale to market leadership.
That is the Mansa-X story.
