SEC urges extreme caution on cryptocurrency

The apex regulator of the Nigerian capital and financial market, the Securities and Exchange Commission has called on Nigerians to exercise extreme caution on the use of “Crypto currency” as a vehicle of investments in the country. 

Acting Director General of SEC Nigeria Ms Mary Uduk disclosed this at the first post capital market committee press briefing for 2018 in Lagos.  She said the commission was acting on its investor protection mandate to alert the public on crypto currencies, especially as none of the persons promoting crypto currencies has been recognized or authorized by the regulator.

Ms Uduk also stated that apart from SEC Nigeria other regulatory agencies in the country, have also not approved any financial service in the country around crypto currency.

The Acting Director General who shared the key resolutions of the recent Capital Market Committee meeting of April 19th, 2018 informed capital market correspondents that the commission had updated its database for the registration of capital market operators.

Speaking further, she said trade groups made commitments to support the partnership between SEC Nigeria and the National Education Research Development Council (NERDC), to institute the stand-alone capital market curriculum for basic and secondary education.

According to her, the CMC agreed for the extension of the forbearance window for multiple subscriptions and forbearance for shareholders with multiple accounts to September 2018.

She said the Technical Committee on Developing a vibrant commodities market in Nigeria, submitted their report to the first CMC 2018 meeting, which will be studied closely and exposed to the public for inputs from the market stakeholders.

The Technical Committee on Non-Interest Capital Market, reported at the CMC that 1,600 retail investors invested N5bn in the first sovereign sukuk instrument in the country.

For the e-dividend registration, the Acting SEC DG gave an update that the total approved mandates at the moment was 2.5m coming from 466,000 unique investors’ accounts. She reiterated the fact that the deadline for the e-dividend had expired by March 31st, 2018.

The new directive henceforth was that bank managers  and registrars will charge the token of N150 per mandate.  Also, the CMC according to Ms Mary Uduk got the report from the Central Securities Clearing Systems Plc (CSCS) that out of 5.1million accounts with them only 1,191 have Direct Cash Settlements (DCS) subscriptions and only 15 out of 18 settlement banks have contributed to the initiative.

The newly appointed Acting DG of SEC Nigeria  also shared that the CMC raised concerns over spate of delistings in the market, and mandated the committee on listings to come up with new strategies to attract new listings.