Disclosures by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in its 2024/2025 annual report show that the fund’s interest income from investments such as bonds and Treasury bills grew by 25 percent to Sh845.96 million in the period.

The interest income was the biggest source of new funds into the ICF in the year, ahead of transaction fees from trades at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) that grew to Sh195.2 million from Sh104.6 million in June 2024.

The ICF also banked Sh19 million from financial penalties levied on licenced entities by the CMA, and a Sh31.6 million gain on its investment in the stock exchange.

The bulk of the income was invested in Treasury bills, raising the holdings of the short term securities from Sh1.12 billion to Sh2.17 billion.

Investments held in the form of Treasury bonds grew marginally from Sh4.59 billion to Sh4.61 billion, and that in equities at the NSE from Sh51.3 million to Sh78.9 million.

In addition to the financial penalties and interest income from government securities, the ICF is also entitled to hold interest accruing funds received from subscribers to public issues such as IPOs between the day of closing an issue and making refunds.

From the trading at the NSE, the fund is paid a commission of 0.01 percent per equities trade, and 0.004 percent on a bonds trade. The ICF has now grown five-fold in the past decade —from Sh1.3 billion in 2015— reflecting the lack of withdrawals in a period when the market has not seen a failure of a stockbroker.

In previous years, the CMA tapped into the fund to compensate thousands of investors who lost money following the collapse of Nyaga Stockbrokers in 2008 and Discount Securities in 2009.

Investors who lost funds in another collapsed broker Francis Thuo and Partners —in 2007— were compensated outside of the fund after the CMA auctioned the company’s seat at the bourse for Sh251 million to Renaissance Capital.

This enabled the regulator to settle an estimated Sh140 million in investor claims at Francis Thuo, leaving about Sh110 million on the table.

The compensation limit in the cases of Nyaga and Discount was capped at Sh50,000 per claimant regardless of the size of loss. This led to calls for an increase in the threshold as many investors were left in loss after the payments, resulting in the subsequent revision of the payment cap to Sh200,000.

More recently, the CMA has disclosed that discussions are continuing on widening the coverage of the ICF to keep up with the growth of the market, which has in the last decade welcomed new products such as derivatives.

Investor wealth at the NSE has also grown to a record high of Sh3.8 trillion from Sh1.9 trillion 10 years ago, helped by a mix of new listings and higher valuations on companies as their profitability keeps rising.

Peaking in January, CMA chief executive officer Wycliffe Shamiah said that the regulator was mulling the establishment of a separate compensation fund for investors in virtual assets.

The regulation of virtual assets such as cryptocurrencies was put under the joint custody of the CMA and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) following the enactment of the Virtual Asset Providers (VASP) Act, 2025 in October 2025.