The Securities and Exchange Commission has said in a move to tackle unclaimed dividends in the capital market, outdated accounts will be suspended.
The acting Director-General, SEC, Ms Mary Uduk, said in a statement that there would be no transaction in respect of any account that its information was not updated.
She said a time frame would be given for capital market operators to resolve all such issues and shareholders to update their information.
According to her, the commission will commence new initiatives to tackle unclaimed dividends in 2020.
Uduk described the issue of unclaimed dividends as a legacy issue as they happened way back in the past, adding that right now, the major problem had to do with identity management which the capital market and other -stakeholders were working to resolve.
She said, “Right now, you will not get unclaimed dividends from new issues. Part of the problem of unclaimed dividend has to do with identity management. We are doing all we can to educate the public on this issue and engaging various stakeholders to be able to get a lot of the information that we require.
“Since then, items like the Bank Verification Number have been added to help in identity management; the capital market is also taking advantage of it. The Central Securities Clearing System and the registrars are working together to ensure that more information from the legacy shareholders are being collected to be able to update their information and get them to claim their dividends.
“The registrars do not have direct interface with shareholders, they deal directly with stockbrokers; but there is a committee comprising the SEC, registrars, stockbrokers, issuing houses, the CSCS and the Nigerian Stock Exchange, working on that in addition to the e-dividend management committee.”
She added that the committee had come up with a resolution that was adopted at the last Capital Market Committee meeting, part of which was that stock brokers would update information in respect of their clients.
Uduk said before 2008, a lot of Nigerians bought shares in the capital market, which was the time before the emergence of BVN.
She stated that some investors did not provide their account numbers and it was agreed that they would update their information, which would be transmitted to the CSCS that would update the information and send them to the registrars.
She added that it was also agreed that there would be no transaction in respect of any account that information was not updated and that on the part of capital market operators they would be given a time frame within which to resolve all such issues.
Uduk disclosed that the commission had approved the rule in respect of electronic offering, which would address some of the problems associated with unclaimed dividends by the time it commenced fully.
She said, “We believe that by the time we commence that, it will address that issue of unclaimed dividend.
“Before you can complete the application, the system will validate your account number; it will not accept incomplete application.”
“We believe that in addition to the e-dividend mandate, these other initiatives that the commission is doing with other stakeholders will address the issue of unclaimed dividends,” she added.