The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says it intends to partner with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to include e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) charges in the guideline for bank charges.
This was even as the commission revealed that about 3.4 billion units of shares have been effectively regularised.
Briefing the media during the second quarter Capital Market Committee (CMC) meeting at the weekend, its acting Director General, Mary Uduk, disclosed that after extensive discussions with the capital market committee, the commission intends to partner with the apex bank to issue charges on e-DMMS transactions.
Uduk said, “The CBN has charges for the banks. This means that any transactions carried out by any bank, there is an established charge. The e-dividend charge is not part of the charges from the CBN and because of that, investors are having issues with banks where, for instance, they are charged for some transactions that are not listed as bank charges which they do not know.
They complained to us and so we decided that we would engage CBN to actually make this part of their charges and so any e-dividend carried out will be charged by the CBN. This came up as a result of us stopping the payment of the e-dividend mandate as we were underwriting the initiative before we mandated investors to pay a token of N150 per mandate”.
She noted that brokers and registrars are required to make available to the Committee on multiple subscription accounts on a periodic basis, the number of regularised accounts and added that the commission would continue to engage relevant stakeholders on e-Dividend and multiple subscription accounts.
The Acting Executive Commissioner, Corporate Services, Henry Rowland, disclosed that over 3.4 billion units of shares have been effectively regularised and 2.7 million accounts have been mandated as regards the e-Dividend.
He said, “As we all know the unclaimed dividend issue is a dynamic one, while we were solving the issue, new ones come in. we can confirm that about 2.7 million accounts have been mandated and when you look at that, you go back to think that if each mandated account will attract a number of unclaimed dividends, then it is of essence.