In its continued effort to clean up the securities market, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has reminded capital market professionals to update their information with the Commission latest July 31, 2017 or face revocation of their licenses.
This information, as issued in a circular, threatened that “any firm that failed to respond within this time frame would be considered inactive and SEC would exercise its power to revoke its registration.” This directive, the Commission said became imperative in the light of the poor response to the December 2016 to February 2017 registration timeline which the Commission had earlier issued.
This poor response was baffling to the Commission, as it had taken steps to ease the stress of such registration. First, the registration could be carried out online at the professionals’ convenience while the Commission had moved the registration and inspectorate divisions to Lagos in a bid to cater for the higher number of professionals practicing there.
Thus, professionals were encouraged to update their details after meeting the minimum number of sponsored individuals required for their registered function is three, including a compliance officer.
