Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc has blamed a supposed breakdown of its information technology (IT) system for delaying the publication and release of its audited financial statement for full-year 2019.
According to a public notice that was sent to the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the company said the IT failure hindered the timely completion of the auditing process.
The inability to conclude the auditing process has, in turn, made it impossible for Sovereign Trust to submit its 2019 financial statement to the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) which is the primary regulator in charge of approving such results by insurance companies.
The statement went on to say that Sovereign Trust regrets the inconvenience this development may have caused its stakeholders. The company’s 2019 audited financial statement will be sent to the Nigerian Stock Exchange once NAICOM eventually approves it, the statement concluded.
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Sovereign Trust is not the only company that has recently notified stakeholders about the delays with the submission of their full-year financial statement.
Recall that just earlier this week, Royal Exchange Plc announced that it would neither release its audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2019, nor its unaudited financial statements for the period ending March 31, 2020, any time soon.
As Nairametrics reported, the company (which is also an insurance company), blamed the delay on the inability of its subsidiaries to collate their financial results on time.
Note that the listing rules of the Nigerian Stock Exchange require quoted companies in Nigeria to submit their audited full year financial statements at most 90 days after the end of each financial year.
Quarterly results are also expected to be submitted at most 60 days after the end of each quarter. Failure to do this would attract various monetary sanctions imposed by the Nigerian bourse as you can see here.