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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), at the weekend disclosed that substantial progress has been made in the implementation of its consolidation of multiple shareholder accounts and electronic Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS), as so far about 3.4billion shares have been consolidated.
Both measures were introduced as part of measures at checking the growth and possibly eliminating the unclaimed dividend menace in the nation’s capital market.
The announcement was made by Acting Director General of the SEC, Ms. Mary Uduk, while addressing the press at the end of the Second Quarter Capital Market Committee Meeting, CMC in Lagos weekend.
Uduk, told reporters that a total of 2.7 million share accounts have so far been captured under the e-DMMS.
She expressed satisfaction with the regularization of multiple shareholders accounts since it was launched last year, describing investor response as very impressive.
According to her, with the help of the Multiple Subscription Committee, 3.4billion shares have so far been effectively consolidated.
The committee “informed the meeting that the Committee of Heads of Banking Operations had agreed to collaborate with the commission to display banners in (their) banking halls all over the country, sensitising the public on the regularisation of multiple subscriptions of shares.” Similarly, stockbrokers and registrars are requested “to make available to the Committee on Multiple Subscription Account, on a periodic basis, the number of regularised accounts.”
Company Secretaries of listed companies, she continued, “have also agreed to display similar information on their website and offices.”
The meeting rose with a resolve that the SEC should engage relevant stakeholders on the e-Dividend and Multiple Subscription Accounts so as to ensure “that complete investor data are transferred among operators such as Brokers, registrars and the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS).
SEC is also to help discourage unclaimed dividends from building up from securities of newly-listed companies, just as modalities should be developed for validating shareholders’ registers, such that “registrars are furnished with incomplete information such as missing account numbers.”
Speaking further, the Acting DG noted that the issue of unclaimed dividend is dynamic, given that as the old heap is being cleared by the registrars, new ones are mounting by the day.
Furthermore, Uduk said the CMC’s Identity Management Committee gave updates of its meeting with National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on the implications of the Nigerian Data Protection Regulation on capital market operations.
