Ag. D.G, Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Uduk.
By Barnabas Esiet.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, has developed a standardized Investor’s Data and Consent Form to be adopted by all Capital Market Operators as part of efforts to address challenges associated with identity management in the capital market.
Identity theft is the deliberate use of someone else’s identity, usually as a method to gain financial advantage or obtain credit and other benefits in the other person’s name, and perhaps to the other person’s disadvantage or loss.
According to a statement, the Form will assist Capital Market Operators, CMOs, in collecting and updating investors data as well as enable them obtain consent of investors for implementing capital market initiatives targeted at improving the overall experience and participation in the capital market.
Acting Director General of the SEC, Mary Uduk, told journalists in Abuja that identity management has been a problem in the Capital market as well as in other sectors of Nigeria’s economy, which SEC is now ready to resolve.
“We are handling it, and that is why we came up with that form that has been exposed and we have asked the Capital market operators and other stakeholders to give us their comments on the form, We want to get as much information as we need from investors to be able to use it in the right way while also protecting that information.” Uduk said.
She restated the commitment of the Commission to properly identify investors to forestall the flow of illicit funds into the capital market.
“We need to identify our investors, we need to know who is putting money in our market and who is not, that will also help us take care of money laundering and other vices and people we don’t want in our market.” The SEC boss noted.
“Years ago, before the global financial crisis, there was lack of good identity management in the market and that made it easy for some people to buy stocks using multiple identities when companies were doing IPOs at that time, what has happened now is that we find it difficult to reconcile ownership of these stocks which is why we have a window open right now for people who got stocks in multiple identities to regularize them.” She added.
Uduk however, warned that the commission would no longer tolerate investors buying stocks in fake names as the window of opportunity is still open for such investors to regularize their accounts without any penalty..
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