Nigeria‘s government is taking steps to grow its fintech capacity and equally improve the financial inclusion in her country while it continues to align with global practices and protect investors’ funds.
The Nigeria Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Monday that it has set up a committee to work on a framework that will see to the regulation of blockchain and virtual financial assets for the country’s Capital Market.
As reported by the local news outlet, Business Insider SSA, the committee dubbed “FinTech Roadmap Working Group” consists of officials from the different sectors, including regulatory agencies, tech experts as well as the private sector.
The announced committee headed by Ade Bajomo will develop a framework to facilitate innovations, as well as regulation within the Blockchain and cryptocurrency space in the country, with respect to financial market integrity, investor protection, and financial stability.
In addition, the FinTech Roadmap Working Group is responsible for comparing global practices on regulatory taxonomisation and for equally stating a specific definition of cryptocurrencies, whether they are a commodity, securities, or as a currency.
The SEC will draw the lines to regulate the financial technology industry in Nigeria based on the framework reported by the committee.
It is also mandated that the committee will recommend a suitable model for the adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in the Nigerian Capital Market, through which the country’s SEC will draw its lines to regulate the industry.
While the project is expected to be completed by the end of November 2019, the SEC already noted that it would join forces with other regulatory agencies to introduce licensing regimes for several FinTech businesses in Nigeria.
Notably, opportunities for the fintech market in Nigeria is significantly huge. In fact, the development today is coming at a good time, given that over 30 million Nigerians are still without bank accounts. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) hopes to reduce the population to at least 20% by 2020.
