[Client Impact]

Strategic Plans for CBK & Kenya Power Pension Fund

[Client Impact]

Strategic Plans for CBK & Kenya Power Pension Fund

Client

CBK & KPPF

Location

Kenya, National

Value

KES 16.1

Duration

2020 & 2023
Overview

Two of Kenya's most consequential institutional pension funds, the Central Bank of Kenya Pension Fund and the Kenya Power Pension Fund, retained ACAL to develop their multi year strategic plans. Together, the engagements span the retirement savings of staff at the country's central monetary authority and its largest power utility. ACAL led the strategy formulation work that anchors how both funds invest, govern, and serve their members over the next five years.

Lead consultant on the Central Bank of Kenya Pension Fund Strategic Plan (fund assets KES 38.3 billion).

Lead consultant on the Kenya Power Pension Fund Strategic Plan.

Strategy formulation grounded in fund specific diagnostics, member analysis, and regulatory environment review.

Five year strategic plans covering investment policy, governance, member experience, risk, and operating model.

Client Context

Pension funds in Kenya occupy a unique institutional position. They are private trust structures, but they manage capital with public significance. The Central Bank of Kenya Pension Fund manages KES 38.3 billion in assets on behalf of the retirement savings of the staff of the country's monetary authority. The Kenya Power Pension Fund manages the retirement savings of the staff of Kenya Power and Lighting Company, the country's largest electricity utility. Both are regulated under the Retirement Benefits Act and supervised by the Retirement Benefits Authority.

The strategic context for Kenyan pension funds has shifted materially in the last decade. The regulatory environment has evolved. The asset universe has broadened to include infrastructure, private credit, and alternative investments. Member expectations on transparency and digital experience have risen. The fiscal and macroeconomic environment has compressed traditional returns. Each pension fund now needs a strategic plan that is sharper, more granular, and more closely tied to its specific member, asset, and governance context than was required a decade ago.

Both the CBK Pension Fund and the Kenya Power Pension Fund recognised the moment and commissioned full strategic plans. ACAL was selected for both.

The Challenge

Each fund presented its own strategic context. The CBK Pension Fund, with assets of KES 38.3 billion, operates with the institutional weight that comes from being the staff fund of the central monetary authority. Its strategic plan needed to set investment policy at a scale and standard that would withstand scrutiny from sophisticated stakeholders, including the regulator, the trustees, and members who understand financial markets in depth.

The Kenya Power Pension Fund operates against a different backdrop. Kenya Power is a strategic public utility with a complex operational and financial history. The fund's strategic plan needed to balance the long horizon investment discipline that any pension fund requires with the realities of operating in proximity to a parent company that has navigated significant corporate stress in recent cycles. The strategic positioning had to be clear about the fund's independence as a trust structure while remaining grounded in the operating reality of its sponsor.

Both engagements also had to clear a non technical bar. The strategy had to be a working document, not a presentation. Trustees, executives, and members had to read the plan and find clear direction on investment policy, governance, member experience, risk, and operating model. Documents that look impressive but do not drive operational change consistently fail to justify the resources spent producing them.

Our Approach

ACAL designed each engagement around the same four pillar architecture, applied with the contextual depth that each fund's specific circumstances required. The approach was integrated, evidence based, and grounded in the regulatory and institutional environment that pension funds in Kenya actually operate within.

Fund specific diagnostic covering investment performance, governance arrangements, operating model, and member experience.

Regulatory and macroeconomic environment review against the Retirement Benefits Act and current RBA guidance.

Strategic option analysis with each option costed, risk weighted, and benchmarked against peer institutional investors.

Five year strategic plan with measurable objectives, sequenced implementation, and a monitoring framework that the trustees can use to track progress.

Solution Delivered

ACAL delivered two complete strategic plans, each fully tailored to the institutional context of the fund. The plans cover investment policy and asset allocation, governance and trustee arrangements, member experience and engagement, risk management, operating model, and the institutional development required to deliver the five year ambition. Each plan was developed with the trustees and senior management of the respective fund and approved through the appropriate trustee and governance channels. Both plans are now the operating strategy that the funds are executing against.

38.3B

CBK Fund AUM Strategic Scope

38.3B

CBK Fund AUM Strategic Scope

5

Year Strategic Horizon

5

Year Strategic Horizon

2

Strategic Plans

2

Strategic Plans

12K+

Combined Workforce

12K+

Combined Workforce

Impact

The two strategic plans have moved both funds into a clearer operating posture. The CBK Pension Fund's plan provides the trustees with a defensible investment policy, an updated governance architecture, and a member experience strategy benchmarked against the institutional weight of the central monetary authority. The Kenya Power Pension Fund's plan provides the discipline and the structural clarity that lets the fund operate independently of the cyclical pressures on its sponsor while remaining responsive to the institutional context it lives within.

For both funds, the strategy is now the working document that organises decision making. Investment committee meetings reference the plan. Trustee reviews use it as the benchmark. The strategic horizon is set, the operating model is defined, and the monitoring framework gives the trustees the visibility they need to act on slippage when it occurs. That is the bar a credible institutional strategic plan has to meet.

ACAL's repeat selection by both funds, and the firm's broader pension and SACCO advisory portfolio across CBK, Kenya Power, KNEST, Kenya Power Pension Fund, and Stima SACCO, reflects a sustained track record in Kenya's institutional investor segment. The financial services advisory practice now sits as one of the firm's mature sector capabilities.

Key Takeaways
Pension fund strategy is not generic strategy

Pension funds operate under specific regulatory regimes, with specific governance structures, against specific member expectations. Strategy frameworks that work well for commercial firms or public agencies need to be adapted to the pension fund context, not transplanted into it. The CBK and Kenya Power engagements were built around this principle. The strategic plans read as pension fund strategies, not as generic institutional strategies retrofitted to pension contexts.

The investment policy is the heart of the plan

Trustees, members, and regulators all read the investment policy first. Asset allocation, return targets, risk tolerance, alternative asset exposure, ESG considerations, and rebalancing rules need to be set with the seriousness the document warrants. A pension fund strategic plan that treats investment policy as one section among many produces less institutional value than a plan that builds the rest of the document around the investment policy as its centre of gravity.

Governance discipline compounds over the strategic horizon

Five year strategic plans only work when the governance arrangements are designed to keep them on track. Trustee composition. Investment committee structure. Audit and risk committee mandate. Member representation. Each element needs to be designed against the strategy it has to deliver. Both the CBK and Kenya Power strategic plans treated governance design as a primary strategic question rather than an administrative detail.

Member experience is the next strategic frontier for Kenyan pension funds

Investment performance and governance are the foundational concerns. The next frontier is member experience. Members increasingly expect transparency, digital access, real time information, and meaningful engagement with the fund that holds their retirement savings. Pension funds that build the member experience layer as part of their strategic plan position themselves better than those that treat it as a downstream administrative concern. Both ACAL strategic plans built member experience into the strategic architecture from the outset.

Sector: Financial Services, Pension Fund Strategy, Institutional Advisory | Clients: Central Bank of Kenya Pension Fund, Kenya Power Pension Fund | Geography: Kenya, National | ACAL Role: Lead Strategic Plan Consultant | Combined Contract Value: KES 16.1 million

How We Helped Clients Grow Smarter

How We Helped Clients Grow Smarter

How We Helped Clients Grow Smarter

Change the Game

Work with Experts to Change the Game

Work with Experts to Change the Game

Start a Conversation

Button

40+ major programmes delivered

100% project completion rate

GCF accredited · One of 54 worldwide