By Micheal Eboh

The President of the Association of Corporate Trustees (ACT), Mrs. Oluwatoyin Sanni has commended the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on its efforts in the area of market development, monitoring, supervision and rules making.

Sanni who gave the commendation in her address during the 9th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the association in Lagos last week, said the efforts would help in repositioning the market for a better performance.

The ACT president therefore, called on members attention to the new rules by SEC with compliance implications for Collective Investment Scheme(CIS) and state government bond issuers, saying they should advise clients to comply accordingly.

“For example, we are expected as trustees to advise our CIS clients to have scheme assets safe-kept with Custodians independent of the Trustees and the Fund Manager as provided by SEC Rule 239. Regarding State government bond issuers, we to advise them to ensure that they comply with SEC Rule 307 which stipulates that the state’s audited annual financial statements are published in at least two national newspapers through the duration of the Bond among others,” Sanni said.

The ACT president, who also the Managing Director of UBA Trustees Limited, noted that the Nigerian debt market has woken up, while the mutual fund industry is on an upward curve.

She disclosed that the Association recorded some achievements last year.

According to her, ACT has successfully be registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) after due approval of the Attorney General of the Federation.

“We reviewed and contributed to proposed rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) affecting our business and market.

The Association continued to participate in the Administrative Proceedings Committee and other committees of the SEC. We attended and contributed actively ah the Nigerian Law Reform Commission workshop on the proposed Trustee Act,” she said.

Sanni disclosed that the association would focus on three major areas this year.

“The first one is awareness creation. We are going to be aggressive in creating awareness of trustees and role of trustees in our market. We are going to involve in knowledge building and capacity building among our members. We think that trustees skills are special skills they to be actively developed .

And lastly, we will continue to interact with regulators and other self regulatory organisations (SROs) to ensure that the trustees industry is well protected and that the rights of beneficiaries are well preserved and protected,” she said.