SEC appeals to investors to claim dividend in capital market

The Security and Exchange Commission has urged investors to claim their due dividends in the capital market.

Lamido Yuguda, the Director-General of SEC made the plea in a statement by the commission in Abuja, according to the News Agency of Nigeria.

The commission also canvassed for the use of electronic payment in order to reduce the number of unclaimed dividends.

What SEC is saying

Yuguda pointed out that many investors had shares in the market that they had abandoned. He said people have not come forward to claim their dividends and this has led to huge unclaimed dividends.

“The Commission has been educating and enlightening the public on how they can get their dividends. People do not need to wait for the broker to send the dividend warrants through the registrars. The dividends can be paid directly into their bank accounts through e-dividend payments,” he said.

He also said that SEC was currently carrying out some initiatives that would appeal to younger generations and attract them to the capital market.

What you should know

Nairametrics reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that unclaimed dividends in the Nigerian Capital Markets rose to N170 billion as at December 2020.

In 2015, the SEC had introduced the electronic dividend payment platform to enable an automated deposit of dividends to investors’ bank accounts to help mitigate the incidences of unclaimed dividends.