Shelter Afrique, the pan-African housing finance institution, which gave the award at the inaugural edition of awards (SHAF Awards), explained that NMRC was recognised for its historic role in enhancing mortgage access and promoting affordable homeownership in Nigeria.
NMRC is a CBN-licensed mortgage liquidity facility with the core mandate of developing the primary and secondary mortgage markets. It raises long-term funds from the capital market for mortgage refinancing and, by extension, promotes affordable housing development and homeownership in Nigeria.
Read Also: Despite economic headwinds, NMRC pushes total assets up 17% to ₦85.4bn
Its citations included the different Bond Issuances that have leveraged long term housing finance from the capital market to refinance mortgage portfolios of mortgage lending institutions over a 5-year period.
NMRC’s recognition was also in line with its role in the development and mainstreaming of uniform underwriting standards aimed at formalizing the mortgage origination and administration process in addition to its ongoing advocacy for nation-wide adoption of the Model Mortgage Foreclosure Law.
The Awards are part of the Pan African Institution’s inaugural initiative tagged the ‘Shelter Afrique Affordable Housing and Urban Development Practitioners Awards’ for 2021.
The awards are a testament to Shelter Afrique’s commitment to recognizing the efforts of practitioners in the affordable housing and urban development space who are promoting best practices and contributing towards solving and harnessing Africa’s housing challenges and urban development opportunities.
The organizers of the award also noted the historic milestones that NMRC has recorded in leveraging technology to improve the operations of Nigeria’s housing market and mortgage data management since it commenced operations in 2015.
These include the Mortgage Market System (MMS), Nigeria’s first mortgage management technology infrastructure that proffers an end-to-end solution for the housing finance market in Nigeria. In addition, NMRC’s collaboration with stakeholders like NBS, CBN, FMBN, MBAN CAHF to develop the Housing Market Information Portal (HMIP) was also recognized.
The HMIP serves as the interface for easy access to real-time and live information on housing finance, property development and ownership was also recognized. The HMS and HMIP were designed to address barriers created by the cumbersome processes surrounding homeownership in Nigeria.
The system integrates the financing operations of the key components of the entire housing value chain from construction finance to primary mortgage origination and administration to secondary market mortgage refinancing.
While accepting the award on behalf of the institution, the MD/CEO of NMRC Kehinde Ogundimu thanked Shelter Afrique, the organizers of the Awards for the international industry recognition and restated the commitment of the company to deepening its drive towards developing Nigeria’s housing and mortgage market. Ogundimu further noted that “the institution is encouraged by the recognition of NMRC’s contributions, and the award will spur the team to be more innovative.”
