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Inside CBK's Plans for a Retail Bond System
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Kenyan Wall Street
July 28, 2025
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CBK Launches Retail Bond System Tender Days After NSE Hits Record Turnover
By Harry Njuguna
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has launched a high-stakes tender for its own retail bond system, a move that comes just as the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) breaks new ground in secondary bond market activity.
On July 21—only three days before CBK unveiled its plan—the NSE’s secondary bond market reached a record KSh 1.552 trillion in turnover, surpassing last year’s full-year total with five months still left in 2025.
If the current pace continues, market turnover could exceed KSh 2.5 trillion by year-end, reinforcing the NSE’s dominance as the core venue for government securities trading.
The tender, published July 24, seeks a full-service information system for retail investors—one capable of handling bond issuance, sales, settlement, and investor servicing.
While the official aim is to expand retail access and digitize the process, the system’s end-to-end scope has fueled fears that CBK could build infrastructure parallel to, or even bypassing, the NSE’s established secondary market role.
Such a move would put the exchange’s KSh 2 trillion secondary bond turnover business at risk, along with significant revenues for brokers, custodians, and other market intermediaries.
The move coincides with the NSE’s own plan to attract 9 million new retail investors by allowing everyday Kenyans to build wealth through direct trading access, diversified products, and an expanded agency network. The plan has faced some backlash from market intermediaries but both the NSE and CBK seem to be after the same goal: democratizing the capital markets so anyone can invest as easily in bonds and shares as they do in almost everything else.
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