The Securities and Exchange Commission has hinted that it aims to end the issuance of e-dividend warrants by Dec 31 2015. The disclosure was made Capital Market Committee (CMC), second quarter press briefing, held in Lagos yesterday.
This is especially necessary because of the rising cases of unclaimed dividend. The commission estimates the value of unclaimed dividends at N80 billion.
E-dividend is an electronic dividend payment which will enable an investor’s account to be credited after 24 hours that dividend is paid.
Mounir Gwarzo, Director General of SEC, while addressing journalists bemoaned the low level of patronage on e dividend registration in the market, noting that only 6,000 investors have accessed the platform.
In order to engender more patronage Gwarzo said that the CMC has agreed that all banks should appoint an e-dividend champion that would interface with retail investors to ensure a seamless registration, the commission will also compel retail investors to embrace the exercise.
According to Gwarzo, the e-dividend champions would forward all issues associated with the registration to Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), to give clarifications on the issues within three days.
He added that the SEC has also extended the write off period for free registration process from September 14th to December 31, 2017 to enable more investors to partake on the exercise.
“With all efforts to encourage participation on e dividend, only 6,000 retail investors have registered and this is not encouraging.
“People are frustrated with the misunderstanding between the banks and registration and at the meeting, we agreed that banks should appoint e dividend champion to handle the operations of each bank on the registration.
“We also agreed that henceforth, by the end of June 31st 2017, no registrar will issue e dividend warrant to any investor to enable them embrace the exercise.”
