| dc.description.abstract | The survey for the study reported here was carried out between is" April and 15th June, 2007. The study sought to investigate whether there was a perceived need to restructure the regulatory framework of Kenya's financial markets and the perception of financial market intermediaries regarding a single regulator model for Kenya's financial markets.
The population of interest in the study comprised all the institutions licensed in the banking, insurance, investments and pensions sectors. The information was collected using a drop-and-pick later questionnaire to be completed by the managing director or company secretary or other officer involved in regulatory affairs in 82 institutions sampled from 730 institutions licensed in Kenya.
It was found that there is a perceived need to restructure the regulatory framework of Kenya's financial markets and the most important factors in deciding whether or not to change the regulatory structure are historical development, level of skills, size of the financial market, state of development of the financial markets, level of concentration in the fmancial services industry, adequacy of current regulatory structures, potential economies of scale to be obtained, linkages between financial institutions and institutional structure of the financial services industry. It was also clear from the majority of respondents that Kenya should adopt a single regulator model for its financial markets as it has some merits such as Economies of scale and scope, ease/efficiency of decision making, shared resources, cost reduction for regulated institutions, enhancing accountability by clarifying the roles of the regulatory agency, more effective response to market innovation and development due to better monitoring of issues affecting the entire financial system and unified approach to regulation thereby reducing regulatory arbitrage.
While there was no relationship found between the type of institution and the perceived need for reform of the financial regulatory structure, a relation was found between the type of institution and the support for a single regulator model. An investigation into the cmtse ofthis scenario would be necessary.
It was evident from the study that there is still a great need for research to be carried out in the broad area of financial regulation and financial regulatory structure in Kenya as there is limited available information in this area. | en |
