The Securities and Exchange Commission has embarked on a four-day enlightenment programme to educate investors about the benefits of the recently launched electronic dividend platform.
The programme, which commenced Monday with a road show, will continue till January 13, and culminate in a town hall meeting on January 14, 2015.
Speaking during the road show, the Head, Market Development Department, SEC, Mr. Henry Rowlands, said investors in the Nigerian capital market were entitled to their investments’ returns, hence the need for the e-dividend portal and the enlightenment campaign.
He was quoted in a statement by the commission as saying, “We discovered that when dividends are declared by the companies where they (shareholders) invest, they are sent by post which takes time and sometimes they do not even come at all; and because investors change addresses, some of the dividend warrants do not even get to them.
“Having looked at it as at September 30, 2015, the commission realised that unclaimed dividends amounted to about N90bn. SEC is determined to address this issue once and for all and that is why the commission launched the electronic dividend portal.”
Rowlands also said, “Electronic dividend simply refers to an online system of paying dividends to inventors whereby when companies declare dividends, which are the profits meant for investors, rather than send it by post, they will just wire it to the investor’s bank account and that is what informed this exercise. The commission desires that the money of investors hanging as unclaimed dividends gets paid to them with ease.”
The Head, Corporate Communications, SEC, Naif Abdussalam, said the commission had directed all registrars of public companies to return all unclaimed dividends, which had been in their custody for 15 months and above, to the paying companies.
SEC, he also said, had notified the public that enrolment for e-dividend payments could now be efficiently conducted at bank and registrar branches nationwide through the online platform launched on July 29, last year.
He added, “We want to make sure that we take the message down to the grass roots; we want every Nigerian investor within this period of 90 days which is free to get registered because immediately after the 90 days, a fee of N100 will be charged. All you need to do is walk into a bank or registrar’s office and you will be registered. Once you are registered, you will start getting alert for your dividends.”
SEC had recently advised all shareholders and investors in the capital market to approach their banks or registrars to complete the e-dividend mandate form for immediate processing and upload to the e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS).
To eradicate the difficulty encountered by retail investors in claiming their dividends through their savings account, SEC, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System in July, last year, launched the e-payment platform.
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