The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said it is committed to repositioning the capital market to attract all Nigerians.
A statement by the commission on Sunday said the Director-General of SEC, Mr Lamido Yuguda, disclosed this during a meeting with a team led by the British Deputy High Commissioner in Abuja on Friday.
The commission said it is implementing various initiatives to ensure that products and offerings in the market are accessible to both the young and old which will further deepen the 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.”
He said 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 further disclosed that SEC recently approved an e-offer for MTN and expressed the excitement of the commission.
He said with the e-offers, a lot of Nigerians would be happy to invest in the capital market and that would dissuade people from patronising illegal schemes.
Yuguda said the commission, in its drive to attract more people to the market, was focusing on a proper identity management system, which would also aid in the reduction of the issue of unclaimed dividends.
