Investment Advisers and Portfolio Managers to Partner SEC on Investor Education

The Association of Investment Advisers and Portfolio Managers (IAPM) has pledged to collaborate with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to deepen investor education as part of efforts to attract more investors to the nation’s capital market.

Many retail investors are hesitant to return to the stock market due to the losses recorded during the downturn in 2008 and 2009. But President, IAPM, Mrs. Oluwatoyin Sanni, said with intensified education more retail investors would return to and reap the numerous benefits in the market. She stated this while speaking launching IAPM’s Training Centre in Lagos.

According to her, IAPM will collaborate with SEC on investor education to ensure investors understand the market, and know how to invest in it using the right channels and experts so as to avoid the bad experience of the past.

“We are looking to collaborate with the SEC in doing a lot of investor education, which is what is required, in the particular this time which we find our market. SEC alone cannot do it because does not have the manpower and financial resources to do this alone. So associations, groups and bodies and operators like us need to rally round SEC and do this. One of the things we hope to do is to support the SEC with not just operators training but also with investor training and education,” Sanni said.

Speaking on the Training Centre, she said IAPM, which has been improving the body of knowledge in the country on investment for 35 years, saying the association had run its programmes most at external locations.

“But we have recognized the fact that training is an integral part of what we do so we need to have our own training venue that is available 24 hours seven days a week to boots our training events. We have our calendar of programmes for the year and we have 10 short courses for investment professionals spread across the year. We also have certificate programmes that we have been running. We are about to launch a Work Readiness Programme, which is to prepare fresh graduate for the workforce especially in the investment community,” she said.

She explained that IAPM has a very rich highly experienced and diverse faculty comprising professionals who are specialists in different areas including risk management, bonds, equities , treasury, asset management, trusteeship and members for the academia.

“What distinguishes our faculty from what you will find in typical school is that we place a lot of emphasis on hands-on experience. So people that will come and lecture at our programmes are not just beginning from text knowledge but they are speaking about what they have practiced and don,” she said.

IAPM, formerly known as Association of Pension Funds and Investment Managers, was formed in 1981 by corporate bodies including portfolio and asset managers, trust corporation, pension fund managers, banks, insurance organisations among other related organisations. The aim of the association is to promote professionalism in the practice and administration of investment management advisory in Nigeria.