Unclaimed dividend drops N29.2bn in 1 year as 1.4 million investors key into e-dividend sysyem

By Kayode Ogunwale 

Efforts of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reduce unclaimed dividend in the Nigerian Capital Market has started yielding result as over N29.2 billion has been paid between November 2015 and September 2016.
Unclaimed dividend in Nigeria was over N80 billion before the SEC introduce e-dividend platform to ease dividend payment.
Speaking at the post fourth quarter Capital Market Committee (CMC) meeting in Lagos, the Director General SEC, Mr. Mounir Gwarzo said efforts made by the commission to ensure that the era of stale dividends and huge unclaimed dividends in the market become a thing of the past is already achieving result with the e-dividend registration system.
According to him, from November 2015 to October 2016, over N29.2 billion unclaimed dividend has been paid out.
Gwazo explained that “In this country, we have never had this kind of initiative that has reduced unclaimed dividend like we had today. Apart from the investor getting his dividend where ever he is, that investor will be able to get dividend that in the last five years he has not been able to get.
“When we started the e dividend, the major challenge was for people to key into the e dividend mandate there are unclaimed dividend that has not been able to claim, the registrars were compelled to pay all the arrears of unclaimed dividend.
“The e dividend is for the interest of retail investors. Since we started implementing the masterplan, our focus had been the retail investors to make sure they come back to the market and ensure that some of the issues they complain about are addressed.”
In the same vein, Gwarzo stated that about 1.4 million investors have keyed into the e-dividend system between November 2015 and October 2016.
Furthermore, the SEC boss explained that the commission plans to stratifying licenses for various exchanges.
“What we are doing is also to stratify license for an exchange. What we have today are unified requirements for companies to set up an exchange now the stratification will lessen the requirement.
“For instance, if you want to set up an exchange under tier 2, the requirement will be lesser than that of tier 1 and if you want to set up under tier 3, the requirement will also be light and the kind of company that also be listed will be lesser than the other one.
“We think it will draw some of these Small, Medium and Entrepreneurs to be listed because over the last 20 to 25 years, we have not seen any much progress in the second tier securities market and now it is rebranded to Alternative Securities Market, we have not seen much. There a few companies that want to set up a few trading platform and we think we have to give them the prerogative to do that,’ he added.