I last bumped into the late Mr Nzomo Mutuku a couple of weeks ago at Yaya Centre just in front of Chandarana, we made brief eye contact, waved and moved on. While I never knew the man at a personal level, I got to interact with him at a professional level, through the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA). His leadership impact at the Authority that he served for over 20 years and ended up leading as the Chief Executive, is a testament that we have lost a good man.
In a country where many government institutions don’t work, where corruption is rampant, RBA was clearly one of the few cut out from the rest. Dealing with the Authority, as I got to, courtesy of the organization I work with, Cytonn Investments, I can tell you the organization is different and I believe that speaks a lot about the man that led the organization.
First, RBA is a functional institution: when we put in our application for a license to be a pension funds manager, we didn’t have to know anybody to progress our application. We never asked anyone influential to make a call on our behalf. We were never asked for a bribe to progress our application. We did not have endless meetings and runarounds, no. We simply submitted our application, went through the process and boom, we had our license. The organization is a functioning bureaucracy.
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Second, it is a facilitative institution: for occasional times we have had infractions, the experience was of a facilitative institution trying to guide a licensee on how to address the infraction, not using an infraction as a gotcha kind of opportunity. I recall one instance where we were to pay a fine, they waived the fine without even being asked. I still remember my baffled remarks to my colleagues, about it being strange that we had offered to pay a fine but they were waiving it, on our part, it was a pleasant turn of events.
Third, the institution has had an impact and grown the industry: while there is still a long way to go in pensions, it’s impressive that RBA has grown its industry asset base to Ksh1.5 trillion, coming second only to the banking sector’s Ksh4.5 trillion.
Fourth, he built a public institution that is unusually responsive to changing market dynamics. Almost every year, there have been proposed changes in the RBA Act and Regulations geared towards improving the industry, the latest being allowing pensions to be allocated for homeownership.
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Finally, RBA has built a multi-ethnic market. Take a look at pension fund managers and administrators, you see entrepreneurs from all walks of life. In the financial services sector, the pensions industry is arguably the most representative of the face of Kenya.
You can tell a lot about a leader by the type of organization they leave behind. RBA is a unique public institution based on my experience and for that, we owe Mr Nzomo Mutuku a great debt and gratitude. Hence, I end where I started, I never knew the man at a personal level, but I knew the works of his hands. He used his position to build an institution to serve his country, he did not use the institution to serve himself and narrow interests; we have lost a great man.
Mr Nzomo Mutuku was a unique public servant, we owe him a great debt and gratitude for his service – Fare thee well.
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