The Director-General of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mary Etuk, has challenged the Fintech firms in Nigeria to come up with innovative products that would disrupt the capital market.
“We urge innovators to identify areas of concern or practices and this could be addressed or improved with technology. We need to collaborate”, she said this while speaking at the Lagos Fintech Week in a paper titled Enabling Inclusive Fintech in the Nigerian Capital Market: A Regulator’s Perspective.
Lagos Fintech Week is an invigorating week of distinct Fintech events that delivers exciting discussions, stimulating demos and insightful debates.
Etuk listed steps taken by SEC to prepare it for the Fintech regulation and these include recognizing the potentials of Fintech and the attendant benefits it can bring to the Nigerian capital market.
The apex regulator of the capital market said the commission has whole-heartedly embraced the Fintech concept and have rolled out series of initiatives to ensure the market maximizes the full potentials of the fast-paced innovation.
Some of the actions taken by the commission involved the setting up of internal Fintech working and advisory group as well as market-wide committee to draw a Fintech roadmap for the Nigerian capital market.
According to her, the commission has also established a Fintech division, which would serve as an innovation office; set up internal capacity development in the area of Fintech and emerging innovations, and the development of a sandbox assessment form.
The commission has reviewed the existing legal framework to identify its sufficiency and propose amendments and “We are interacting with the Nigerian Fintech community to grow the industry within the Nigerian capital market as well as review ICOs and white papers to ensure they comply with existing laws”, she said.
Specifically, she solicited the support of the Fintech community while asking the ecosystem to identify the challenges in the capital market, innovate around the challenges and move beyond experimentation stage.
“A number of innovations in the capital market are yet to reach the go-live stage. We expect innovators to move beyond the experimentation stage and introduce products, which could be deployed to the market.
“We need the innovators to interface with the regulators in developing their products. We are willing and ready to constantly interface with innovators. This interaction would improve capacity and make available adequate resources that would ensure the deployment of innovations that would satisfy the interest of all stakeholders”, she said.
Israel Odubola
