SEC Has Set Up Mechanism To Address N215Bn Unclaimed Dividends- Agama

The Director General (DG) of the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC, Dr. Emomotimi Agama, in this interview speaks on efforts by the Commission to address rising cases of unclaimed dividends. 

Agama, spoke shortly after attending the 2024 Capital Market Committee (CMC) meeting in Lagos. YEMISI IZUORA was there for Oriental News Nigeria

Excerpt 

This is your first CMC meeting as DG, what are the highlights of your remarks at the meeting?

Nigeria is certainly a developing and emerging market and an emerging market with the population we have must have a robust capital market that will help in development. It is important that we continue promoting capacity and we hope to unlock the full potential of the market in aligning with the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu. 

Our responsibility as the Management of SEC is to drive initiative that will build our economy. We are providing the regulatory environment to ensure that we can attract investments to this market. we believe in a short while the National Assembly will pass the New ISA that will give us more powers to ensure we have a robust and progressive market.

We want investors to have the opportunity to save and the opportunity to invest and the opportunity to have a return on their investments. As a new management we will listen to the people, every complain that comes to the SEC will be treated. We are going to run an administration that takes the people as very important.

We all know that Nigeria is a commodity based economy and so we must tap at the opportunities available to us. The SEC being the regulator of the commodities space will collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment to organise the second International Commodities Conference later in the year.

Part of what we are also doing is to embrace technology in the dissemination of information and also use technology in enhancing access to the market. that is very critical for us especially when you look at the demography that exists in this country. This country has a teeming youth population and the only way we can reach them is via technology and that is what we will do.

We also know that the use of technology to enhance various products in the market is very important to us. We will work very closely with other regulatory agencies in making sure that many of these happen. 

Any there any verifiable achievements in the Capital Market that you can share with us? 

There have been significant developments in the Nigerian capital market for 2024. In the primary market, the Commission has so far approved nine new issuances totaling ₦1.228 trillion, reflecting increased confidence in the market. 

In the fund management space, the Net Asset Value (NAV) of Registered Mutual Funds has grown by 111.08 per cent to ₦3.335 trillion, indicating a strong and sustainable growth.

What is the official figure of unclaimed dividends? 

As at December you had not claimed your dividend, in March a new dividend will be declared and that will add to the old one. Hence it is appearing as if it is rising, it is still the same people, not until they come to claim them, they will continue to add up. As at March 2024 it was about N215billion and what we desire to do is to make sure we bring that down. We are putting up mechanisms to make sure that happens.

What we have done also in order to enhance the process is that we now have a new portal that allows you to do what we call self-service. One of the other things we are going to do is to create an app which will be in the Google play store for people to download to enable them access their dividends real time and claim same. We are working with technology and that will deal with the issue about the increase.

We have been talking about issues in the capital market like unclaimed dividends. Any improvements?

For the SEC it is a very important topic because it speaks to the investors themselves. Unclaimed dividends are dividends that have not been paid to investors.  The reason why investors come to the market is to have returns and when the return is not getting to them it becomes a challenge and the SEC is very serious about it.

Very recently the Senate Committee on capital market had a hearing on the matter and we were there fully. For us at the SEC, we believe that we can deal with it and that has taken us into rejiging the entire process.

Very recently, the SEC and the Committee for Identity Management for the Capital Market looked at the entire spectrum of the unclaimed dividends issue and identified that the major issue is lack of identification of investors. 

That alone brings to the fore that technology will be a solution. 

So we are looking at the full hog of the entire process trying to make sure that we identify people because one of the reasons why dividends are not paid to people is because of their account numbers and other missing details that are required by the companies to be able to do that.

The SEC is in the fore front of making sure that the unclaimed dividends are reduced and at the end of the day completely erased. 

For the SEC, we will continue to do our best, we will employ technology, we will employ education, we will employ persuasion, we will employ every means that will cause people to understand the processes around claiming dividends, the processes around identification and the processes around making sure people understand what they need to do to get their dividends back. 

For us any effort to reduce these unclaimed dividends will be a positive one for us.