New guidelines meant to check misappropriation of investment funds by Fund Management Companies (FMCs) or Asset Management Companies in the country is currently being drafted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The new guideline will put in place corrective measures with regards to third party and related transactions by FMCs which has been identified by the SEC as the one of the major causes of the collapse of FMCs in the clean-up of the country’s capital market industry.
Deputy Director of SEC, Paul Ababio, who made the disclosure about the new guideline said, “What we learnt from the sector clean-up was that there was corporate governance weakness. Due to that we have introduced a conduct of business guidelines in which we require market operators to issue annual reports.”
“We also found that there were related transactions that were not done transparently, so we’re working on introducing investment guidelines for fund managers,” he added speaking as a panelist at the Tesah Capital webinar themed; Investing After the Financial Sector clean-up.
Also speaking as a panelist on the webinar was senior lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), Dr Elikplimi Agbloyor, who noted that FMCs in the country need to rebuild trust with local investors “since trust in their operations by the public has been lost.”
According to him, most Ghanaians despite having confidence in the financial sector, have not invested with any FMC or Asset Management company after the sector clean-up exercise.
Adding that, majority of Ghanaians now prefer investing in government securities like Treasury Bills following the financial sector clean-up exercise undertaken by government.
The sudden increase in the appetite for government securities by Ghanaians, Dr Elikplimi asserts, is due to the believe that funds invested with government is much safer and highly unlikely to be lost as was in the case of the clean-up exercise which saw depositors’ funds locked up with Fund Management Companies (FMCs) in the country.
