Temi Popoola, the Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX), has restated commitment of Nigeria Exchange Limited (NGX) to provide a reliable, efficient and an adaptable exchange hub in Africa for investors and businesses, to save and to access capital. Popoola stated this while delivering his opening remarks at the 8th the edition of Nigerian Investor Value Awards (NIVA) hosted by BusinessDay Media Limited in collaboration with NGX on Saturday, 14 May 2022 at the Lagos Continental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos.
"Leveraging our investments in business innovation, our diversified range of products and services, and our robust platform for engagement, we are well on our way to achieving our aspiration to be Africa’s preferred exchange hub. This is evidenced by a number of advances that we have recently implemented including the launch of the NGX Exchange Traded Derivatives Market, which saw the listing of two Equity Index Futures Contracts, NGX 30 Index Futures and NGX Pension Index Futures, with more securities to be added in the future. ", he said.
Speaking on some of the immediate plans of the Exchange, Popoola said, "In the year 2022, we will consolidate these advances by focusing on key initiatives aimed at growing the capital market for the benefit of all key stakeholders, maximizing our business transformation initiatives to ensure that our market is on a trajectory towards improving retail participation, technology adoption, innovation competence and building a very robust marketplace for capital products and services. We will also prioritize our efforts to evolve the capital market ecosystem to enable capital formation for technology driven companies, thereby establishing wealth accretion opportunities for emerging sectors such as fintech” and Tech start-ups. Enhancing policy advocacy to support the creation of a market structure is critical to achieving these aspirations and we will further our stakeholder engagement to create a market wherein NGX is strategically positioned in the capital flow value chain to lead inclusive policy change in critical market-related issues including but not limited to policy advocacy, regulatory and stakeholder engagements as well as collaborations."
Further highlighting NGX’s aspirations in for 2022, Popoola elaborated on The Exchange’s plans to improve retail investor participation in the market. He stated that, "NGX will intensify efforts aimed at driving drive retail expansion and digital transformation targeted at building end-to end digital platforms and leveraging partnerships with market intermediaries to enhance the distribution of capital market products and services. Ultimately, these partnerships will support financial inclusion initiatives and improve retail investor’s coverage”.
The NGX boss thanked the organizers, noting that The Exchange shares the common goal of promoting actionable and effective multi-stakeholder dialogue on issues central to a well-functioning financial system.