The overall objective of this Department is to enhance the growth and development of Kenya's capital markets, in line with the Authority’s strategic focus. This is achieved through carrying out research on existing and new products, institutional arrangements and market infrastructure that would assist in designing, developing and/or improving capital markets products in Kenya, leading to the development of the very highest quality of existing and new capital markets products, institutions and market infrastructure. The Department is also responsible for collecting and maintaining, accurate capital markets data for internal and external use.

The Unit is mainly charged with the following responsibilities:

• Researching and advising on new products before they are introduced to capital markets. This is usually done through concept papers and research outputs from which the regulatory framework is drawn-up.
• Carrying out research aimed at assessing the modalities of deepening capital market products, institutional arrangements, market infrastructure and services.
• Researching on ways of enhancing market participation and the institutional capacity of market intermediaries and other licensees of the Authority.
• Maintaining a statistical database on economic and capital market parameters (performance indicators) and generating relevant reports for internal and external use.
• Identifying capital market development gaps and potential constraints and making recommendations of the possible ways of filling those gaps and/or mitigating the constraints.
• Implementing and operationalizing recommendations on capital market products and services made both from internal and external research effort.