Nigerian Stock Exchange CEO Advises Investors to Embrace FinTech

Nigerian Stock Exchange CEO Advises Investors to Embrace FinTech

Goddy Egene

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema, has called on domestic investors to embrace financial technology (FinTechs) as capital flow into that space continues to increase.

Onyema, who stated this at a forum on Fintech in Lagos, said as investment into the space continues to gain traction around the globe, the exchange planned to explore new technologies including blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) for capital raise.

According to him, the global picture of capital flow into FinTechs especially in emerging markets is a proof that FinTechs are important economic catalysts in the fourth Industrial Revolution, but regretted that local investors are not taking its advantage to advance their investments.

“According to KPMG’s “2018 Global Analysis of Investment” equity investment into global FinTech companies almost tripled from $18.9 billion to $50.8 billion between 2013 and 2017 and has continued to gain traction. Surprisingly, foreign investors seem to be seeing these gains better than local investors as statistics show that they have dominated capital raise for indigenous start-ups in the last couple of years,” he said.

The NSE CEO said at the exchange, their key strategies is the segmentation of our market with the introduction of a Growth Board to cater to companies with high growth prospects, including FinTechs emerging from venture capital management to a more mature management that would require public investment and corporate consolidation.

“This approach, in our opinion, would assist companies with high growth potential, leverage public finance for growth and expansion. FinTech offers the opportunity to deepen capital market activities and also achieve sustainable economic growth by empowering a larger portion of the populace to access financial services; unlock efficiencies in product and service delivery for financial institutions and increase transparency and resilience of the Nigerian capital market and larger financial ecosystem,” he added.

Meanwhile, trading at the stock market opened the week on negative note as the NSE All-Share Index (ASI) fell by 0.22 per cent to close lower at 29,495.91, while market capitalisation declined to N11.079 trillion.

The negative performance was fueled by losses recorded by Dangote Cement Plc, United Bank for Africa Plc and FBN Holdings Plc. Also, activity level weakened as volume and value traded shed 4.6 per cent and 12.2 per cent to 224.2 million shares and N1.8 billion respectively. The top traded by volume were Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc (45.7 million shares), Chams Plc (36.8 million shares) and Union Bank of Nigeria Plc (26.2 million shares) while GTBank Plc (N503.3 million), Nestle Nigeria Plc (N350.1 million) and UBN (N178.4 million) led top traded by value.

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