The Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Alhaji Lamido Yuguda, says the commission is working to ensure it reduces the level of unclaimed dividends to zero per cent.<\/p>\n
In an interactive session with editors in Lagos, Yuguda said that unclaimed dividends rose to N180 billion as at Dec. 31, 2021.<\/p>\n
That is a large amount, but when you compare that with the total amount of dividends declared in the Nigerian capital market, these unclaimed dividends amount to about five per cent of the total amount of dividends declared.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough, five per cent is still not the ideal number, it should be zero per cent.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery person, who has come to the capital market and invested money, should be able to get his dividends as and when due,\u2019\u2019 Yuguda said.<\/p>\n
He also said that SEC is working with the Central Securities Clearing System (CSCS) and other stakeholders in the industry to address the issue of unclaimed dividends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe SEC has been working with CSCS, Registrars and the stockbrokers to make sure that every market appraisal makes it easy for the clients to fill their mandate form.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are also making sure that investors continue to get their dividends.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He also said that the Federal Government intervened last year by enacting a Finance Act on Unclaimed Dividends Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is looking at unclaimed monies both in the capital market and the banking system and established a fund that will actually access through dividends that have been unclaimed for a certain number of years that meet certain basic definitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not that the government has taken over the money, but when the claimants eventually surface, there is a system for recovering.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery person who has come to the capital market and invested money should be able to get his dividends as and when due,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
He noted that SEC would continue working to ensure it gets to zero per cent level, saying that \u201cthere is a need for strong investor education to achieve success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Alhaji Lamido Yuguda, says the commission is working to ensure it reduces the level of unclaimed dividends to zero per cent. In an…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n