ICSAN forum to explore solutions to unclaimed dividend issue

Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria, ICSAN reputed for corporate governance advocacy will next week assemble company secretaries, registrars and other operators in the capital market to dig deep for solutions to the rising unclaimed dividend, which it believed is partly caused by poor data management.

Unclaimed dividend in Nigeria stood at N190 billion as at August last year, according to reports.

This huge figure according to experts, is as a result of shareholders forgetting to update their addresses with investment companies, some people don’t know that they inherited shares and don’t know that they are entitled to dividend, or some shareholders are dead with nobody knowing about their investments.

These issues and more are part of topics in the capital market to be addressed at the ICSAN 2024 Company Secretaries and Registrars forum with the theme: ‘’The implications of Artificial Intelligence and Cyber-security for Capital Market operations’’

Chatting with newsmen on the forthcoming hybrid forum scheduled for April 4, 2024 in Lagos, Abiola Laseinde, chairman of ICSAN Corporate Members Committee said they chose the topic to “address how operators can leverage technology to change ways of working, thinking and change the narratives within this eco-system”.

According to her, one of the biggest challenges of effective and seamless operation within the capital market is use of data and the objective of the forum is to ensure that the operators understand the dynamics of mining data and using data effectively.

Laseinde believes that with technology, the unclaimed dividend issues and corruption within the system, will be reduced significantly.

She said one of key mandates of the company secretaries and registrars forum is to enhance learning and development agenda of the institute and “we organise a lot on capacity building for our members and other stakeholders”

In her contribution, Laide Adeyemo, member of the committee said that “these days, AI is helping people and in the case of unclaimed dividend, AI should assist to ensure that people’s dividend is easily claimed without manual intervention”.

She said the forum will create value for organisations by helping them understand better and structure how to use AI in this regard. “After the conference, individual organisations will learn what to do to obviate unclaimed dividend”.

Some of the speakers at the forum include Simon Aranonu, Executive Director of Large Enterprises Directorate of Bank of Industry; Catherine Nwosu, CEO of African Prudential Plc; and Francis Olawale, CEO of Frank Nominees Limited.