The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has disclosed that over 2.820 million shareholders enrolled on the E-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) process at the end of the third quarter of 2019.
Acting Director-General, SEC, Mary Uduk, in an interview, explained that more investors had embraced the e-DMMS initiative as they had finally accepted it as the future.
The SEC boss also added that the commission had ordered registrars to stop the practice of requesting for confirmation of bank signature as part of the e-DMMS process.
Details of e-DMMS: Launched in July 2015, the initiative, which was birthed by SEC in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria, is to eradicate or reduce to the barest minimum the incidence of unclaimed dividend.
To boost the e-dividend mandate and Direct Cash Settlement initiatives, the commission engaged the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) on behalf of the capital market community to facilitate identity validation and account validation in an effort to enhance market processes.
To create more awareness, Uduk said all capital market operators were required to display awareness campaign banners of the e-DMMS at their offices and venues of annual general meetings.
She requested that all capital market operators should work with the commission to share awareness information on their social media platforms.
According to Punch, the commission was reviewing the request from the Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria for extension of time for compliance with the transfer of complete investor data among operators such as brokers, registrars and the Central Securities Clearing System.
She said, “Upon completion, the position of the commission will be communicated to the relevant parties. We will also engage the National Pension Commission on modalities, which would permit Pension Fund Administrators to participate in securities lending and see it as a profitable initiative.”
Acting Executive Commissioner (Operations), Isyaku Bala Tilde, urged shareholders to complete the form which “would be taken to the bank to verify that you are an account holder; you don’t need another banker’s confirmation.”
Please help Shareholders further by searching for adequate information on the followings:
(1) Expression of the enrolled Shareholders as percentage of total Shareholders as at end of Q3 2019
(2) What are the constituents of above “Complete Investor Data- Does it include Shareholder bank particulars i.e Bank, Account Number, BVN etc? Would the data facilitate easy payment of entitlements-dividend, return money etc to Shareholders? When is the likely commencement date of implementation?- the date could be reviewed according to circumstances.
(3) Is completion of Stock Transfer Form ( STF) still mandatory before E-Dividend enrollment ? Before dematerialization, Registrars needed STF to obtain specimen signature of Transferee which would serve as standard of comparison while acting on Shareholder’s instruction for change of address, re-validation of expired warrants etc but not for payment of dividend because after settlement of share transactions, a bonafide Shareholder has right to dividend, receive notice of meeting, attend meetings etc.Before the introduction of E-dividend,some Registrars stopped posting dividend to Shareholders that have no STF because they know it would take long time to re-validate the dividend; that contributed to increase in unclaimed dividend which is part of negative development in capital market operations. As We are abandoning analogue and progressing to digital capital market operations-due to electronic connections, share Traders need not to physically contact their Stockbrokers for trading, I think completion of STF is almost becoming piratically difficult therefore, to encourage massive enrollment, the capital market Committee could consider STF removal from compulsory requirements for E-Dividend enrollment; some Registrars are enrolling Shareholders for E-Dividend without STF.
SEC knows that some of the Registrars are deliberately delaying dividend payments to enable them invest the money for their own gains leaving investors to endlessly hope for the payment.
In some cases, the Registrars endlessly request for fulfilment of conditions that are not stipulated by the SEC.
Unfortunately SEC doesn’t act on complaints. E-mails to SEC on dividend issues don’t get replies. Investing in Nigeria is frustrating.
SEC should in particular investigate VERITAS Registrars and African Prudentials. They frustrate investors