By Babajide Komolafe

Why should it take two days for an organisation to acknowledge an email message or five days to acknowledge a message received by post?

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) need to provide answers to these questions, and failure to do so is tantamount to encouraging operational latitude and insensitivity to the plight of investors in the capital market.

Otherwise, it would not have designed or introduced a Complaint Management Framework for capital market operators that allows a whole two working days to acknowledge complaint   received via email. Note that the two working days is not to resolve but to acknowledge receipt of complaint send via email.

The Commission stated, “Capital Market Operators (CMOs) and public companies shall acknowledge receipt of complaints received by email within two (2) working days.   Where complaints are received by post the CMO and public companies shall respond in writing within five (5) working days of the receipt of the complaint. Copies of the complaint and the acknowledgement letter shall be forwarded to the relevant competent authority.”

The above implies if the complaint was sent on a Friday, the capital market operator has the laxity, yes, laxity, of four days just to acknowledge the email.

It is even worse in the case of complaints sent to SEC itself.   The commission stated, “In the case of (a) the SEC shall acknowledge receipt of complaints received from complainants by email, within five (5) working days.    In the case of (b), once a complaint is lodged at the SEC, the SEC shall; (i) Assess the complaint and decide whether the subject matter falls     under the purview of SEC or whether it needs to be referred to another entity. The SEC shall assess the complaint within ten (10) working days.

In other words it would take up to five working days, Monday to Friday, or Friday to Thursday, for the commission just to acknowledge receipt of a complaint. And it requires 10 working days to assess its jurisdiction over a complaint sent to it.

The above indicates that SEC does not see the need for, it does not practice, and neither does it encourage prompt attention to complaints. The time allowed just to acknowledge complaint via email encourages and promotes laxity, tardiness and insensitivity to the plight of complainants.   This contradicts the vision of the commission.

The vision of SEC is, “To be Africa’s leading capital market”, and its brand driver is, “Towards a world class market”. If indeed the Commission is committed to this vision of being a leader with the aim of achieving a world class market, it should not encourage laxity towards the plight of investors or any complainant.

We are in an era where regulators and organisations leverage on technology to enhance service delivery or achieve instant response to service breakdowns. That is what SEC should encourage. For example, in the banking industry, in the past, it could take banks weeks to respond and correct ATM dispense error, but due to the insistence of the Central Bank of Nigeria, such errors are now either auto reversed or corrected within 24 hours. That is what SEC should emulate.