Escrow trustee selection: process opened

We have opened the formal selection process for the licensed escrow trustee on The Dagaz. The process is led by Erik Søndergaard, our founder and managing director, with capital structuring input from Ström Partners in Copenhagen and legal review by Otieno & Patel Advocates LLP. We are publishing the criteria here so that the eventual appointment can be read against them.

The trustee will be a Kenya-licensed deposit-taking institution with a published trust services mandate, a minimum capital adequacy ratio comfortably above the regulator's floor, and a documented track record of administering construction-linked escrow accounts for residential developments. We are looking for a counterparty that an independent auditor can review without surprise — not the cheapest, not the loudest, not the one with the most personable relationship manager.

Three institutions are on the working shortlist. We will not name them while the conversation is commercial. We will name the appointed trustee on engagement, together with the licence number, the trust deed reference, and the standing instructions that govern the release of funds at each construction milestone.

The substantive point: no buyer money will be received by DEMAR Properties Limited. All buyer payments will be made directly to the appointed escrow trustee, held in a designated trust account, and released only against milestone certificates issued by an independent project monitor. The release schedule is fixed at the time of the trust deed, published, and shared with every reservation.

We treat this as a structural decision, not a marketing one. Buyers in Nairobi have, with reason, learned to ask developers what happens to the money between deposit and handover. Our answer is that we never touch it. The trustee does. The auditor watches the trustee. The buyer can read the audit.

Names follow on engagement.