Rewane Commends SEC on Promotion of Financial Literacy

The Managing Director of Financial Derivatives Limited, Mr. Bismarck Rewane has commended the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its efforts to promote financial literacy.

Rewane gave the commendation at the launching of Nigerian Journal of Securities Market (NJSM) in Lagos. According to him, it is important for Nigerians to be financially literate especially given the current economic recession.

He therefore, hailed the capital market regulator for its efforts at ensuring that more Nigerians understand the capital market and other areas of the financial sector and urged SEC to sustain the efforts at educating Nigerians on financial issues.

Also speaking, the Director General of the SEC, Mounir Gwarzo, said the commission remained committed to improving the financial literacy of Nigerians as poor financial literacy has been identified as one of the factors responsible for the low level of financial inclusion in the country.

According to Gwarzo, the launch of the journal is one of the steps being taken by the Commission to address this gap.

He said: “As part of the SEC mandate to develop the Nigerian capital market and by implication the economy, the Commission is putting all energy, resource and time into implementing the Nigerian Capital Market Master Pl. The SEC has focused on several financial literacy initiatives as part of its market development drive.”

The DG said efforts are being made to boost financial literacy among young people with school programmes, literacy week and a capital market curriculum.

He said the journal represents another milestone in the endeavour of the SEC to fulfil its Capital Market literacy master plan whose major recommendation is developing a regular and up to date publication and journal on capital market operations.

Gwarzo said: “The NSMJ is a periodic multi-disciplinary journal that will serve as a platform for disseminating information and research on the Nigerian capital market. The journal will publish original evidence-based papers on capital market activities.”

He added that the journal aims to revamp capital market information, serve as evidence point and re establish SEC as the knowledge bank of the capital market.

“The journal will provide an avenue to disseminate critical insights into some of the main problems facing the securities market. It will provide an avenue to present and analyse emerging trends and contemporary issues as they affect the Nigerian Securities market,” the DG said.

Gwarzo had on Wednesday said that the market would continue to gain investors’ confidence and remain bullish.

According to him, the various economic policies of the federal government, the new foreign exchange management strategies of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and efforts being made by the Commission and CMC would help sustain the bullish trading so far witnessed in the market this year.