Ugo Aliogo
The President of CFA Society, Banji Fehintola, has stated that in order to drive increased portfolio investments and competitiveness in the capital market, there is need for the entrenchment of trust and integrity among players in the market.
Fehintola, who disclosed this recently in Lagos during the CFA Society Nigeria Ethics Challenge Competition, said when trust is broken, the capital market doesn’t function.
He also stated that five years after its collapse, the market has not recovered because some persons believe that the market wasn’t transparent.
He explained that when individuals feel the market was rigged against them, they prefer to stay away from the market.
Fehintola added that the ethics challenge was one of the university outreach programmes organised by CFA society Nigeria for university students.
Speaking about the competition, he said it was aimed at university students who are given case studies based on the CFA ethics, codes and standards, and the integral part of the CFA curriculum.
He hinted that the CFA curriculum has three levels of examinations and the only subject that is tested three times in every level is ethics because of the believe that investment professionals exists to manage money for people, “and in a client manager relationship, the client must be able to trust the manager. If you don’t trust the person managing your money, then you will give them your money to manage.”
The CFA Society President remarked that the competition embodies the mission of CFA institute to promote the highest standards of ethics, education, and professional excellence in the investment industry, “and this aligns with the CRS strategic approach and the objective of the Bank’s Endowment programme – the Samuel Asabia Chair for Business Ethics at the University of Lagos. The competition will run regional level in Abuja and Lagos and National Final in Lagos.
According to him, “The way out of this problem is that civil societies like ours to carry out advocacy and be part of what is happening in this country in terms of helping our markets to develop and we do a lot there and part of what we do is that we work with the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) to teach their graduates.
“We have some of our members who go to the NSE to teach. We do this as part of their graduate trainee programmes. We teach them things around portfolio management, and ethics largely to improve the skills of the people who will be operating in that market.
“We have seen a lot of crisis including the global financial crisis in 2008 was as a result of bridge of trust. Integrity in the capital market is important and an investment in young people like this is very important.
“People who are in the industry, spend a lot of time trying to build their integrity, competence and professionalism. If we want Nigeria to be competitive, we have to raise the bar, if you want foreign investments to come into the country, our capital markets must operate at the highest standards, we must be ethical people, who understand investments and run a financial market that is strong. If we do that the economy will grow because investments will come into the market.”
