Press Release;
For the second year in a row, Kenya’s Capital Markets Authority (CMA) has been recognized as the Most Innovative Capital Markets Regulator Africa by the International Finance Magazine Awards 2017 (IFM Awards).
The IFM Awards seek to honour individuals and organisations in the international finance industry that make a significant contribution to enhance innovation and drive performance.
Commenting on the recognition announcement, the CMA Chief Executive, Mr. Paul Muthaura said, ‘’The Authority, through the leadership of its Board, is committed to facilitating innovation in financial services through leveraging Kenya’s positioning in the region as an innovation centre. We continue to actively engage with and share experiences with peer regulators driving financial services innovation in markets as diverse as Australia and Abu Dhabi Global markets. These engagements have allowed us to develop a strategy framework for implementation of a regulatory sandbox to support fintech innovations in the capital markets.”
In parallel, in order to unlock the potential for local business to leverage the capital markets domestically, Mr. Muthaura noted that the CMA, in partnership with industry players, has been convening Business Incubator and Accelerator on the Listing Experience events which have provided an opportunity for 70 potential issuers to participate in structured engagements with the Transaction Advisors, the Nairobi Securities Exchange, Nominated Advisors, Lawyers, Auditors, Stockbrokers and Investment Banks, among other service providers including the CMA, to discuss their readiness for listing. This initiative is underpinned by the objective of the 10-year (2014-2023) Capital Market Master Plan of facilitating 3-4 new listings annually.
In its drive to fast-track the roll-out of new products and services in capital markets, CMA has also adopted a principle-based approval approach. As a result of this, CMA successfully issued two policy guidance notes (PGNs) to operationalize issuance frameworks for Asset-Backed Securities and Global Depositary Receipts and Notes. In the same year, the Authority also issued a PGN to facilitate the rollout of Exchange Traded Funds resulting in the first listing of such a product in Kenya.
In order to balance the Authority’s market regulation and market development mandates, within the same period, the Authority took significant strides in the implementation of the Code of Corporate Governance for Issuers of Securities to the Public (Corporate Governance Code) through the conduct of extensive stakeholder sensitization, the gazettement of a Stewardship Code and the introduction of a robust reporting template to ensure comparability of the quality of governance in different issuers as well as to inform the publication of corporate governance scorecards to empower investor decision making.
