SEC DG Restates Commitment to Develop Capital Market

Acting Director General of SEC, Ms. Mary Uduk

The Acting Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ms. Mary Uduk, thursday reaffirmed the commitment of the commission to develop the nation’s capital market in line with the 10-Year Master Plan.

Uduk stated this while speaking on “Capital Market Master Plan: The Journey So Far,” at the ongoing SEC Journalists Academy held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

According to her, with 101 initiatives, the commission has the potential to expedite the implementation of the 10 year- master plan.

Uduk noted that the market was highly concentrated and dominated by the banking sector which constituted 60 per cent of the market as at 2003 to 2007. She noted that 15 out of 20 most capitalised companies were banks, adding that risk management and corporate governance was not developed enough to support the fast growth thereby leading to inappropriate market behavior and abuse of margin lending.

The DG said SEC had focused on leading the market to recovery and part of the recovery plan was the development of the master plan in collaboration with other stakeholders to map out strategies to improve key areas especially investor protection and education, among others.

Looking at the success achieved so far, Uduk said: “For instance, we have ensured that all share certificates are fully dematerialised. This is to say that physical share certificates are now fully converted into electronic form in Nigeria. This initiative has further enhanced the market efficiency and transparency.

“The recapitalisation of capital market operators was aimed at improving the baseline infrastructure of the CMOs, improves their market access and service delivery as well as enable them comply fully with the New Minimum Operating standard set by the commission. These were aimed at helping the market develop robust controls; strong governance framework and effective human capital.”

Disclosed that at December 31, 2016 which was the deadline given for all CMOs to recapitalise, 384 out of 449 CMOs had fully complied, adding that more of them have done so afterwards.

She said that the National Investor Protection Fund (NIPF) was established to compensate investors for pecuniary losses, boost confidence and encourage the domestic retail investors back to the market.

”In the same vein, the e-Dividend Mandate Management System (eDMMS) was developed to reduce the quantum of unclaimed dividends in the market and also enable direct payment of investors’ dividends into their nominated bank accounts. So far, 2.55 million accounts have been mandated under this system,” she said.