The Securities and Exchange Commission has revealed that it has brought about N2.36tn in discretionary and non-discretionary funds under custody following updates to the guidelines for Collective Investment Schemes in the country.
Last December, the commission proposed amendments that would address the complaints of players in the Collective Investment Scheme segment of the capital market.
In a notice on its website, the SEC revealed the new amendments to its regulations titled ‘Exposure Of New And Sundry Amendments To The Rules And Regulations Of The Commission’.
Providing an update on the proposed guidelines at the media briefing after the first quarter Capital Market Committee meeting on Friday, the Chief Economist at SEC, Dr Okey Umeano, said funds in the discretionary and non-discretionary windows had been brought under custody to enhance investor protection.
Shedding more light, the immediate past Director-General of the SEC, Lamido Yuguda, at the meeting noted that it was standard practice that assets management and custody are separated but that arrangement only applied to the public CIS, not the bilateral arrangements.
With the new rules, all funds were mandated to the custodians.
The former SEC DG said, “Usually in fund management, you have two important activities, one is the application of the skills of the fund manager to obtain good investment returns for their customers and you have the actual custody of the securities that have been purchased through these investment management processes.
According to Yuguda, what the SEC has done was to mandate all investment management activities in the public CIS space or the bilateral space to be in custody.
He added that investment management must be segregated with the custody part being handled by a duly licensed custodian.
