Fund managers who hold on to clients’ funds and securities will no longer be let off the hook easily.
Director-general, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Lamido Yuguda, stated this at the third quarter capital market committee (CMC) news conference held in Lagos.
According to him, holding on to clients’ funds and securities is a clear violation of the commission’s consolidated rule 95 (1-2) and all funds and securities of clients being managed by fund managers must be vested with the custodians.
He warned that there would be severe sanctions for those that persist in the act.
Yuguda, also drew the attention of fund managers to issues that arose from the commission’s recently concluded inspection of fund/portfolio management operations, saying several fund managers managing discretionary and non-discretionary products and portfolios were yet to seek a “no objection” of their products and portfolios from the commission.
This, he said, is also a violation of the commission’s rules.
On the increasing importance of fintech, sustainable finance, financial inclusion and non-interest finance, director general emphasised the commission’s commitment to creating awareness, imparting knowledge and engendering public participation in these topical areas.
Yuguda disclosed that the minister of finance, budget and national planning has granted approval on non-interest finance (taxation) regulation, which has already been gazetted.
“This has important implications for the market towards encouraging new issuances of non-interest capital market products and services. It is expected that issuers and market operators will take advantage of this by creating more non-interest finance products,” he said.
He commended the House of Representatives’ committee on capital markets and institutions over the recent intervention over the issue of the rising value of unclaimed dividends.
He further disclosed that the commission was rebuilding the e-dividend management mandate system (e-DMMS) platform, which according to him, involves having a centralised submission of e-dividend mandate forms, application programming interface (API) for banks and registrars, a revamped web interface, among others.
