Courier organizations in Nigeria may soon be losing over N500 million annually when delivery of annual reports, notices of annual general meetings and dividend warrants go fully electronic.
Moov Logistics News gathered that for some years now a number of courier companies have been feeding fat on this errand service to stock market operators. Tunde Alabi, a stock analyst with a popular company registrars who is familiar with this development told our correspondent that a good number of courier firms generate 95% of their income from shipments handed to them by registrars of quoted companies.
Mr. Alabi foresees the death of many of the registrars-dependent courier firms, wondering why the courier sector in Nigeria has not been innovative to move with the digital tide. He pointed at their inability to take advantage of the rising delivery opportunities in the e-commerce sector, wondering why the likes of Jumia and Konga run their own delivery services while there are over 200 licensed courier companies in the country.
To buttress Mr. Alabi’s position the Director-General, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr. Mounir Gwarzo, disclosed at the 2017 second post-Capital Market Committee (CMC) news conference held recently in Lagos, that quoted companies will save one billion Naira from the printing and electronic circulation of annual reports to shareholders.
The SEC boss while giving this indication added that the commission was perfecting arrangements through a pilot scheme that would ensure electronic circulation of annual reports to shareholders to save cost. Gwarzo said that quoted companies would save between N500 million and one N1 billion from printing and dispatch of hard copies of annual reports to the shareholders.
The DG SEC said that CMC had reviewed the issue in line with economic realities and decided to float a pilot scheme for electronic distribution of annual reports to save cost, and also ensure enhanced dividend payment in the market.
He lamented that 98 per cent of shareholders don’t get dispatched copies of annual reports before the annual general meetings despite the huge courier cost, stressing that companies’ secretaries had been mandated to dispatch hard copies of annual reports during the pilot scheme to shareholders associations’ offices.
“We have been doing something for the past 50 years, which is not helping the companies or even investors,” he added. According to him, the market would review the pilot scheme in the first quarter of 2018 and address identified loopholes before deciding on total stoppage of printing of annual reports.
He noted that total e-dividend registrants in the market as of July stood at 2.1 million out of total unique investors by account which stood at 838,671, while total unique investors by Bank Verification Number (BVN) was 433,164.
