DividendsNG

The Securities and Exchan ge Commission recently gave a public notice th at dividend warrants can now be deposited into savings accounts. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is pleased to notify the investing public that dividend warrants can now be deposited into savings accounts. This follows the directive from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) via Circular referenced BPS/DIR/GEN/CIR/03/005 dated 28 th July, 2016 instructing banks to allow customers with BVN to deposit cheques into their savings account. This is part of the measures they are carrying out to put an end to the growth in unclaimed dividends in Nigeria. The SEC had earlier on engaged the CBN and other stakeholders on key initiatives like the e-Dividend Mandate Management System (e-DMMS) as an online portal for enrolling investors. Retail investors have since then been enrolling onto the platform using their Bank Verification Numbers (BVN). Investors who successfully register on the e-DM...

Have you ever gone through your old clothes sorting them out to give them away only to find a tidy sum of money forgotten in the pockets? Or maybe not in the clothes, but in an old notebook you used to read. How did you feel? You may have jumped up like the woman in the Gospel that found the drachma she was looking for. Sometimes finding an unclaimed dividend warrant can be like that too. You suddenly realise that you are even richer than you thought. Many people today are like that. They struggle without knowing how rich they actually are. Dividend warrants are like cheques. In fact, they are cheques. You know that there are two types of cheques. Since you started doing business you would have seen both of them – the open cheque and the crossed cheque .   The open cheque can be paid in cash but not so the closed cheque. The closed or crossed cheque can only be paid into a bank account usually a current account. Usually there can be a few exceptions to this rul...

Have you ever seen a list of unclaimed dividends? What would you do if you found out that you were among those whose money was sitting idle in company’s account waiting for you to come and collect it? Perhaps you would look for your share certificate to know how   many units you bought. You would also go back to search for those early emails to know how much you bought the shares again. Even though you haven’t paid much attention to the 8 o’clock news or 10 o’clock news, you will patiently wait until it was time for the Business Reports. This time around even if you don’t buy the newspapers to read, you would at least browse the stock market section to know which stock is green and which is red, the first for gainers, the other for losers. But will that solve the problem? Of course not. Your name will still be in that list when it is published again unless you take concrete action. Now let us talk about what you should do if you find your name in the list of ...

Let us say you went to the market one beautiful day and saw a fine shirt. You liked it so much that you bought it. When you got home you realised that it did not fit you so could not wear it. What would you do? Would you throw it away? Or would you hide it in your wardrobe not hanging but folded beneath other clothes? Or would you return it to the trader who sold it to you? Would you rather prefer to give it away? Or maybe sell it to someone else whom it fits. There are many ways to solve the problem. All it needs is a decision and the work is done. You can do anyone you want. The choice will only reflect the way you prefer to do things. This then brings us to the matter at hand. After buying shares and company stocks, what do you do to your investments? Between 2005 and 2008, at a period when the stock market was bullish and profitable, many people took out hard-earned savings to buy up shares. The capitalisation of banks was everywhere and the CBN governors put out standards that ...