The Securities and Exchange Commission has stated that one of its goals in starting the regulatory incubation program for fintechs was to ensure the safety of investors and their investments in the capital market.
In a statement released by the SEC on Sunday, Abdulkadir Abbas, the director of registration, exchanges, market infrastructure, and innovation, made this claim.
According to Abbas, the regulatory incubation program was created as a stopgap measure to make it easier to regulate the activities of fintechs so that they comply with capital market regulations.
“The principal plan is to provide an avenue for new solutions without compromising on investor protection which is our key objective,” he said.
It was an interim measure, according to Abbas, to make sure that fintech concepts that complied with the definition of investment activities in the Investment and Securities Act of 2007 could be evaluated before being accepted into the regulatory incubation program.
The SEC director stated that one of the other goals was to be able to create an opportunity to address a current issue in the market. He added that the commission, through the RI, was providing a means through which fintechs could test their ideas without impairing the integrity of the market.
In April 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released the application portal for its regulatory incubation program for fintech companies already functioning in or aspiring to engage in the Nigerian capital market.
Abbas revealed that the SEC had been speaking with numerous fintech applicants prior to the launch of the RI, some of which were current capital market players.
“Some are existing market operators; some are new interests in the market. And from the time when we announced the takeoff till today, what has been happening is that a lot of applicants are accessing what we call the initial assessment form; that is the first stage of onboarding you into the RI, He said.
“We have had a couple of engagements and what interest us is the traction of new fintech companies providing a solution to an existing problem in the market. But what we are trying to do now very quickly is to encourage more of these fintechs to come now that we have opened this phase.
“We believe that it will deepen the market and it will facilitate bringing new products into the market and new ideas will come on board to solve existing problems in the market.”
