SEC Intensifies Drive to Reduce Unclaimed Dividends

• SEC Intensifies Drive to Reduce Unclaimed Dividends

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced plans to collaborate with relevant stakeholders to sensitise investors on the need to regularise their multiple accounts to enable them to claim their dividends.

The acting Director-General, SEC, Ms Mary Uduk, who spoke during an interview in Abuja, said the commission had taken various steps to ensure that shareholders benefitted from their investments in the capital market.

She said the volume of unclaimed dividends remained huge and that the commission was doing a lot to bring it down.

Uduk said, “Only recently, in our determination to reduce the quantum of unclaimed dividends in the capital market and encourage beneficiaries of deceased investors to step up efforts to claim such dividends, the commission exposed an amendment to our rules, which reduced the time, processes and costs of the transmission of shares from a deceased to the beneficiary.

“The timeline for the transmission of the deceased’s shares has been reduced from three weeks to one week. Going by that, registrars shall ensure that shares of a deceased are transmitted within a week of receiving the request from the administrators or executors.

“This effort will ensure seamless transmission and claim of a deceased’s shares by heirs and administrators.”

Uduk added that it was in a quest for investors to get the benefit of their investments that the commission released a circular to shareholders of the defunct Skye Bank Plc to claim all outstanding dividends.

She said sensitisation efforts were ongoing with other stakeholders to enlighten members of the public on the need to claim their shares through the regularisation of multiple accounts.