SEC urges investors to mandate e-dividend accounts
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says two genuine websites from which investors can access the e-dividend portal are its website, www.sec.gov.ng, and the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) website.
Dr. Emomotimi Agama, the Director-General, SEC, said this in an interview with the newsmen in Lagos.
Agama said that investors could access the e-dividend portal through its official website to mandate their accounts safely and claim their dividends
Agama stated that this information was important, because of the cyber security threats that existed in the internet space.
He said: “if you access the e-dividend portal from the SEC website, it is genuine.
“We cannot deny the fact that some unscrupulous elements might be trying to clone the website, like they do for other institutions.
“However, my guide is simply for investors to use the SEC website at www.sec.gov.ng, which is fully protected, to access the portal.
“The only other website that is genuine for the e-dividend portal to be accessed from is the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) website because the portal was built in conjunction with NIBSS.
The director general also clarified that requesting an investor’s bank verification number (BVN) on those portals was not out of place.
According to him, the BVN platform is, for now, the most authentic retrieval source of information in the financial space.
“We need to verify that you are who you say you are. If the BVN provided does not match your identity, it means it is not yours.
“As an institution, we try to protect investors and ourselves too as regulators. We will try to make the process as easy as possible and as protected as possible too,” he said.
Agama noted that the issue of unclaimed dividends was very important to the SEC because it affected investor’s return on investment.
He advised investors whose shareholding accounts appeared on the list of non-mandated accounts hosted on the commission’s website to use the new self-service portal by clicking on the “NIBSS Self Service” link.
The director-general assured that the SEC was at the forefront of making sure that unclaimed dividends were reduced and ultimately completely eradicated.
“We will continue to do our best at SEC and employ technology, education, persuasion, and every other means that will make people understand the processes around claiming dividends, identification, and getting their dividends back.
“For us, any effort to reduce these unclaimed dividends will be a positive one for us,” the SEC director-general added.
Supreme News reports that unclaimed dividends are dividends that have not been paid to investors.The SEC had launched a revamped e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) portal as part of an effort to curb the increase in unclaimed dividends and generally improve investor experience in the Nigerian capital market.
The revamped e-DMMS portal introduces a self-service interface that allows investors to apply to mandate their accounts for e-dividend virtually, without having to visit a registrar or a bank.
