The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has stated that it is committed to making the capital market appealing to all Nigerians, particularly the youth.
This was disclosed by the SEC Director-General, Mr Lamido Yuguda during a meeting with a team led by the British Deputy High Commissioner in Abuja.
According to him, the commission is taking steps to guarantee that market items and offerings are available to both young and old people, which will help to broaden the market.
Given the average age of 50 years, he discovered that most young Nigerians were not interested in participating in the Nigerian capital markets.
What SEC is saying about participation in the capital market
Yuguda said, “The average age of that account holder was over 50, and that made us realise that the young people were not participating in this market and when young people are not participating in any market, that market is doomed to fail.And young people today prefer to do things on their phones; if you have to fill a stack of forms manually young people won’t do it. We want to make investing in the capital market a fun experience.”
According to him, the capital market experience starts with a bank account.
“So we decided to look at the whole process and find out what is turning young people off. We have started the process and seen how the tech companies are providing much-needed relief to the kind of bureaucracy that happens in the capital market,” he said.
Yuguda also said that the SEC recently accepted an e-offer for MTN, expressing the commission’s delight. He claimed that with the e-offers, many Nigerians would be willing to engage in the capital market, discouraging people from supporting unlawful enterprises.
In order to entice more individuals to the market, he said, the commission was focused on a proper identity management system, which would also help with the issue of unclaimed dividends.
Llewellyn-Jones, for one, argued that one approach to keep people out of the unregulated space is for the SEC to develop more alternative investment opportunities for all types of people.
“The more you can create alternative options, the easier it is to pull people away from unregulated space and that is why the Sandbox is so attractive to us and why we encourage it,” he said.
