Capital market needs further expansion – Stanbic IBTC
A stockbroking firm and member of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited, says there is a need to further deepen the Nigerian capital market with a view to providing investors with real-time trading information.
This, according to the firm, informed the launch of its online stockbroking service on the Nigerian Stock Exchange with real-time processing capacity.
Among its uptakes, the platform would help the market regain the confidence of investors by availing them of insight required to act prudently on new investment opportunities in the marketplace via a secure and robust technologically-driven platform, the stockbroking firm explained.
The Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, Sola David-Borha, was quoted in a statement as saying that the group remained committed to deepen the Nigerian capital market by making available to the investing public information, initiatives and strategies that could help them have superior information about developments in both the local and global markets.
“In introducing the new platform, the overarching goal is to identify both opportunities and threats in the global marketplace, which are made available to investors in real-time to enable them to respond as quickly as possible. Our focus is on attracting investment to the Nigerian economy. The Stanbic IBTC e-Trade platform is targeted at all retail investors,” David-Borha said.
Enumerating the benefits of the platform, the Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited, Titi Ogungbesan, stated that with reliable and timely data, decision making would be faster and added that this would enable investors to structure their activities for efficiency.
Ogungbesan, who said there was no better time to invest in the Nigerian capital market than now when prices of equities were low and attractive, noted that trading on Stanbic IBTC e-Trade was limited to only the NSE for now.
She highlighted other benefits of the e-Trade platform as flexible online trading environment anywhere; 24-hour access to your brokerage account; access to live market data from the NSE for instant investment decision, convenience, transparency and control over your investment. Others are instant email notification on your transactions, automated contract note and trade notification delivery system.
The Stanbic IBTC Group said it had in recent past launched several products and services to deepen growth of the Nigerian financial services market.
It listed the products as the Purchasing Managers’ Index; a composite index to measure private sector activities to provide an early indication of business conditions in the country; the Stanbic IBTC Exchange Traded Fund 30 (ETF 30); an index built on the NSE 30 Index that tracks the 30 most capitalised companies on the NSE; and the Securities Lending Product, which involves the temporary transfer of securities from one party (the lender) to another (the borrower) for a fee.
Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stanbic IBTC Holdings, a member of Standard Bank Group.
The company was set up to provide world-class stockbroking services to local as well as foreign investors in the Nigerian capital market.
A member of the NSE, Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers is licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and is the largest stockbroking house in Nigeria.
[Punch]