The CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema has said that the Nigerian bourse is focused on delivering the mandate of being Africa’s Preferred Exchange Hub.
Speaking at the FINTECHNGR SOCIAL MEET 4.0 in Lagos on Thursday, Onyema noted that “the bigger picture is to create a dynamic marketplace that fuels growth and empowers our people towards excellence in business and ventures”.
He noted that the theme of the event: “Growth Funding and Strategic Capital Raise – Extending Financial Inclusiveness through the Capital Market” is of particular interest to the NSE due to “its connection to our core function as a hub for accessing capital; it is also of key interest to the larger economy, particularly the business community of start-ups and SMEs”.
He recalled that in 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.
“In Nigeria, 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 and unlocking efficiencies in product and service delivery for financial institutions and increasing transparency and resilience of the Nigerian capital market and larger financial ecosystem,” he said.
According to him, these objectives are indeed at the heart of what the NSE does.
“The global picture of capital flow into FinTechs, especially in emerging markets is proof that FinTechs are important economic catalysts in the 4th Industrial Revolution.
“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.
He explained that one of our key strategies at the NSE is the segmentation of the 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, he said, would assist companies with high growth potential, leverage public finance for growth and expansion.
“Apart from this, we are also exploring alternative platforms to catalyse smart and innovative capital raise, leveraging new technologies like the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT),” he added.
GIK/APA