Yemisi Izuora
Nigeria’s quest to deepen financial literacy across all segments of the society is attracting more government agencies relationships as the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, and the National Pensions Commission, Pencom have pledged to work together to ensure more Nigerians are brought into the financial literacy net.
This was part of the resolutions at a meeting between the Technical Committee on Financial Literacy and Pencom in Abuja, weekend.
Head Market Development Department of the SEC, who led the FLTC to Pencom, Mr. Edward Okolo, said the aim of the visit is to further strengthen collaboration between the committee and Pencom in a bid to improve financial literacy among Nigerians.
He disclosed that the Committee is currently in partnership with FMDQ on the training of students on their platform so as to increase their interest in Capital Market Issues.
“We would like to have an open window to collaborate with you, where we could get ideas from you. We should try to collaborate more with the investors and give them avenues for value optimization” Okolo added.
Also commenting, member of the Committee, Omagbitse Barrow expressed the need for the committee to collaborate with relevant agencies and foster a multi directional approach to what the Financial Literacy Committee does.
According to Barrow, “We believe that when more members of the public are financially literate, they will make better financial decisions and deepen their participation in the market.
“We have to work at financial literacy from the foundation, how to get people to manage their resources better before we can move on to investing in the capital market. The more people who are selling their products are interested in financial literacy the more products they will sell. Let’s broaden financial literacy approach so that the public will get value from the financial system. Financial literacy is about the people, he investors and ordinary Nigerians.
In his remarks, Head Investment Supervision Division, Pencom, Dr. Farouk Aminu disclosed that the Commission has started courses in some universities on pension issues and expressed the need for more synergy among regulators in promoting financial health of Nigerians.