SEC institutes N5bn investors protection fund

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it has instituted a N5 billion Investors Protection Fund to compensate investors as contained in the Capital Market Master Plan.

The Director-General, SEC, Mr Mounir Gwarzo, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

According to Gwarzo, the commission will pay an investor as much as N200,000 as compensation so as to bring succour and restore confidence of retail investors in the capital market.

“ We have been doing quite well, the electronic dividend, the direct cash settlement, the dematerialisation I mentioned are all part of the implementation of the master plan.

“We have also done other things like the recapitalisation; we have instituted a corporate governance scorecard, requiring each company to comply with the score card.

“We have also introduced an operationalised, our national investor protection fund.

“Which allows an investor that invests in the capital market as long as that investment was registered by SEC, as long as the operator was also registered to undertake that function

“If there are some problems that led to loss of money, the national investors protection fund would compensate the investor up to a certain limit it has a maximum of N200,000

“ We have been talking about amending some of our laws in the capital market

“We have also set up an advocacy group that will look at the market, and will look at how can capital market be on the front burner of the Nigerian economy.

“So in terms of the implementation of the master plan we are doing quite well. It is very tedious, it is very laborious. But we believe that the implementation will certainly raise the standards of our market.”

According to Gwarzo, a board had been set up to help run the affairs of the fund and its members would ensure that complaints from investors were genuine.

“If you lodge any complaint, there are a lot of rigorous processes of verification to ascertain that your complaint is genuine and that you are actually the true owner of that investment.

“There is a limit that you can be paid more than N200,000. So the whole essence of giving the 200,000 is temporally to ease the financial pressure the person is going through. Last year, we paid about 320 beneficiaries, that is in early 2016.