Business
SEC Empowers Trade Groups For Capital Market Dev
The Acting Director-Gen
eral, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Mr Mounir Gwarzo, says the commission is empowering trade groups in the capital market to enable it to regulate and strengthen its operations.
This is contained in a statement by the commission’s Head of Corporate Communication, Mr Yakubu Oluleye, in Abuja, recently.
The statement reported that Gwarzo said this when he received members of the Association of Assets Custodians of Nigeria (AACON) in Abuja.
It said that the policy thrust of the current management was the empowerment of the groups for greater and more effective role performance in the market.
The statement quoted Gwarzo as saying, “as long as people come together to form groups, we will support them”.
“That is why we have reviewed our complaints management framework to enable trade groups to handle complaints and resolve them and that is better for the market.
“The management is working to empower Self Regulatory Organisations (SROs) and Trade Organisations to enable them to handle some complaints and deal with them with dispatch.
“This is because the strategy of the management is not to create committees but to focus on prescriptions and ensure that they are executed within reasonable time frames.
“We are leveraging on making it mandatory for every registered operator to belong to a trade group. Some may not want to do so but that is a way of strengthening the trade groups; we are going to come up with that directive,” it said.
The statement said the commission had finalised the rules on complaints management framework which would allow complaints to be managed at the lower levels.
It said the acting DG, therefore, urged the custodians to carry out their responsibilities, to enable them to manage complaints effectively.
According to the statement, the President of the association, Mr Kemi Adewole, underlined the importance of creating environment conducive for foreign direct and portfolio investments, to deepen the Nigerian capital market.
She commended the SEC for its regulatory role, adding that the association would continue to manage foreign investors’ impression of the Nigerian market.
The statement quoted Adewale as saying, “our clients are about 90 per cent of foreign investors that come into the country; so we are the first port of call most times”.
According to her, funds should not be idle and that is why “you need a mutual party which is the role of the custodian”.
The statement said the association was mindful of costs in its transactions in the market, which was why it had tried to bring the costs as low as possible.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
