Mandate Accounts For e-Dividend Through SEC Website, Investors Urged

Investors have been urged to access the e-dividend portal through the website of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The director general of SEC, Dr. Emomotimi Agama stated this in an interview recently. He emphasised that the process is safe and urged investors to take advantage of the opportunity to mandate their accounts.

According to the SEC DG, if you access that portal from the SEC website, it is genuine. The only other website that is genuine that it can be accessed from is the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) website because that platform was built in conjunction with NIBSS. This is very important knowing fully well the cyber security threats that exist in this space.

He stated that requesting for a Bank Verification Number on the portal is not out of place because for now it is the most authentic retrieval 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 with your identity, it means it is not yours. As an institution we try to protect the investor and protect us too as regulators. We will try to make it as easy as possible and also as protected as possible too,” he explained.

Agama said the issue of unclaimed dividends to SEC is a very important topic because it speaks to the investors themselves, saying that “the reason why investors come to the market is to have returns and when the return is not getting to them it becomes a challenge and SEC is very serious about it.”

Agama said the SEC and the Committee for Identity Management for the Capital Market looked at the entire spectrum of the unclaimed dividends issue and identified that the major issue is lack of identification of investors.

He said “that alone brings to the fore that technology will be a solution and the Commission is looking at the full hog of the entire process trying to make sure that people are identified because one of the reasons why dividends are not paid to people is because of their account numbers and other missing details that are required by the companies to be able to do that.”

The Commission announced the launch of the revamped e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) portal as a bold step to curb the growth of unclaimed dividends and generally improve investor experience in the Nigerian capital market.

According to the Commission, the revamped e-DMMS Portal introduces a self-service interface that allows investors apply to mandate their accounts for e-dividend virtually, without having to visit a registrar or a bank.”