Gwarzo gets another 2-years as AMERC Chair

Mounir Gwarzo, SEC Director General

Director General of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, has been unanimously re-elected to continue providing leadership to the Africa Middle East Regional Committee (AMERC) of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) as its Chairman.

The AMERC comprises securities regulators who are IOSCO members within the Middle East and North Africa as well as sub-Saharan African regions.

He would serve for another term of two years.

Mr. Gwarzo’s re-election is not only a clear testament to Nigeria’s growing influence and improved image in the international community but also a strong indication of the overwhelming support he enjoys among peer regulators following a very successful first tenure.

It would be recalled that in February 2015 members of the regional body elected Mr. Gwarzo as Chairman of AMERC during their 34thannual meeting in Muscat, Oman to complete the outstanding term of his predecessor.

Upon his election, Mr. Gwarzo had outlined to members his agenda for the regional committee pledging to focus on advancing issues that improve voice, visibility and inclusiveness for African/Middle Eastern markets while working towards more cooperation, especially to boost capacity building and cooperation.

This agenda aims to tackle three major challenges facing the frontier and emerging markets within the AMERC region which are dearth of capacity, inadequate visibility and poor level of integration. By this unanimous re-election, members have expressed desire to see Mr. Gwarzo continue to lead the Committee to keep addressing these challenges. For example, AMERC members had for years been yearning for the inclusion of Arabic as one of the official languages of IOSCO since about 50% of the member countries within the AMERC region are Arabic-speaking nations.

Knowing that adopting Arabic will engender greater visibility and participation in IOSCO’s decision-making, Mr. Gwarzo promised to vigorously advocate its adoption by the IOSCO Board. He persuasively argued on the importance of the systemically important Arabic-speaking member jurisdictions who regulate capital markets worth trillions of dollars in combined capitalization.

His argument has been effective as the IOSCO Board recently considered and approved the adoption of Arabic as one of its official languages, a decision that pleases countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE but also elevates the inroads non-interest finance could begin to have on the global financial system.

In the area of capacity building, Mr. Gwarzo’s tenure has been even more remarkable. He has championed ideas within the IOSCO Board that will enhance the capacity of AMERC markets, especially tapping from their more developed counterparts in Asia, Europe and North America.

Three notable ideas are already being implemented by IOSCO and will certainly be critical to addressing capacity gaps, particularly in frontier markets within the AMERC region. They are the establishment of regional hubs, the roll out of an online toolkit and commencement of a global certificate programme.

In fact, Mr. Gwarzo was chosen by the IOSCO Board to lead the first effort by facilitating the setting up of a pilot regional hub for capacity building for the AMERC region. The hub will be domiciled in Dubai, an internationally accessible travel destination. It will integrate a tailored program of regionally focused workshops, seminars and conferences to be delivered by experienced regulators and members of the academia.

The hub will deliver an exceptional platform for members to exchange expertise, experience and knowledge. Considering the resource limitations facing African countries, Mr. Gwarzo has advocated for scholarships within the design, sponsored by IOSCO, to subsidize the programmes so that countries are able to enhance their capacity within a modest budget.

The second idea, creating an online toolkit, aims to leverage technology to make information and knowledge sharing among regulators as seamless as possible. It will be a rich bank of data, information and resources from which regulators can frequently tap in their day-to-day operations. This is particularly useful for emerging market jurisdictions that require more resources to achieve capacity building tools as the toolkit comes in handy and at no cost.

In addition to these efforts, Mr. Gwarzo has focused on partnering with fellow IOSCO members within sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from capacity building programmes of bigger markets such as Nigeria.

The proposed global certificate programme aims to standardize knowledge of financial markets across regions. It is designed to be really global with equal amounts of time spent by participants in Madrid and at the prestigious Harvard University in the United States. Again, Mr. Gwarzo is stressing the importance of awarding scholarships to less developed markets to enable them benefit from this programme, as they certainly need it most in spite of their resource constraints.

Again, Mr. Gwarzo is stressing the importance of awarding scholarships to less developed markets to enable them benefit from this programme, as they certainly need it most in spite of their resource constraints.

Already, a lot of work has gone into implementing these ideas and members of AMERC have made a strong statement of support for their continued implementation by re-electing Mr. Gwarzo to keep leading the efforts. Ultimately, we should see more and more integration of the region as that is among the AMERC’s key objectives. Prior to Mr. Gwarzo’s first election, West Africa was the least integrated capital market of all other sub-regions within AMERC. Following discussions with counterparts from Ghana and the francophone West Africa, Mr. Gwarzo hosted in Abuja, discussions which led to the establishment of the West African Securities Regulators Association (WASRA) with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2015.

WASRA was set up to give a fillip to the integration efforts already being championed by the region’s exchanges within the West African Capital Markets Integration Committee (WACMIC). Currently, WASRA’s membership consists of the Conseil Régional de l’Épargne Publique et des Marchés Financiers which regulates securities markets in Francophone West Africa as well as the Securities and Exchange Commissions of Ghana and Nigeria. The Association aims to accelerate the harmonization of rules and regulations that will facilitate integration.

By this reelection, Gwarzo is to serve on the Executive Committee of the highest decision-making organ of IOSCO for the next two years. The term will commence at the inaugural meeting of the new IOSCO Board during the annual meeting in 2016 in Lima, Peru which holds later in the year. His completed tenure gives a lot to cheer, especially for less-developed members of the region, and also gives a lot of room for optimism going into new tenure.