The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will meet today in Abuja to discuss the progress made on e-dividend “free” registration exercise, and resolve whether or not to extend tomorrow’s (Feb. 28) deadline, an informed source at the Commission told BusinessDay.
The possibility of an extension is not farfetched going by our source who noted, that “the response level from shareholders is still low, and any decision to stop the e-dividend free registration exercise now, may result to some people even jettison to register.”
Since the commencement of the electronic dividends (e-dividend) registration exercise, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been carrying the marginal cost of N150 per shareholder.
As at last month, only 2.1 million investors have been registered under the e-dividend registration.
SEC has since advised all investors in the Nigerian Capital Market to take advantage of the on-going free registration and register by approaching the nearest branch of their bankers or registrars for enrollment before the deadline.
Abdul Zubair, acting Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said early this year that the Commission has spent about N315 million for free e-dividend registration for shareholders across the country.
While SEC continues to carry the cost for this e-dividend free registration exercise, shareholders are not getting the fair service from the portal provided by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS).
BusinessDay reported that the e-dividend portal provided by NIBSS “hardly opens” and was frustrating investors in their efforts to ensure they complete their ongoing e-dividend Free Registration.
The spokesperson of NIBSS refuted this but interestingly, our source at SEC said “they are the one giving everybody the major headache.”
Since the launch of the e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) Portal on July 29, 2015 by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the commencement of the exercise, the Commission has consistently extended deadlines for the Free Registration without anyone telling Nigerians who is responsible for such.
The free registration is to ensure shareholders got their dividends electronically, instead of the hassles they usually passed through to process it manually via the banks, and most time postal services making dividend not reaching the shareholders.
“Please recollect that we cannot but have upsurge in the number of investors approaching the Banks and Registrars for registration as the deadline for free registration ends on Wednesday, 28th February, 2018. This was our experience in June and December, 2017, the two initially fixed cessation dates for free registration,” Lilian Phido spokesperson of the NIBBs said.
“In preparation to accommodate the expected upsurge of investors due to the rescheduled deadline of February 28, 2018 for FREE e-dividend registration, we acknowledge that system availability is of paramount importance, to achieve this, System Stability has been strengthened through the deployment of extra resources to further enhance the e-dividend registration portal capacity. NIBSS had advised all Banks and Registrars of a new URL to take full advantage of the enhanced system. Every Bank and Registrar has a representative who we call the E-dividend Champion – they constitute the system and process feedback team at the Banks and the Registrars. To-date we have feedback of Portal Stability from these Champions and no complaint of hitches in the registration process have been lodged in the last 7 days.”
The SEC, in reviewing the progress of the e-Dividend Registration exercise, after the December 31, 2017 previous deadline, noted that there was still a great influx of shareholders desirous of mandating their bank accounts for payment of dividends electronically.
Increasing amount of unclaimed dividend discourages investors from investing in the stock market. From a little over N2 billion in 1999, the figure by the end of 2008 had risen to about N20 billion. And now the SEC estimate that the value of the unclaimed dividends had increased to about N103 billion as at December 2017.
Iheanyi Nwachukwu
