Nigerian regulators working to release guidelines for responsible, sustainable financing in 2020

Investors and players in Nigeria’s financial space are expected to ramp up efforts towards being more responsible for outcomes of investment and financial decisions.

This responsibility will be enhanced with a set of guidelines to be released by regulator’s in year 2020 to propel sustainable financing.

Kenneth Amaeshi, a professor and director of the Sustainable Business Initiative, University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom, disclosed this at the June edition of the Finance and Investment Dialogue hosted by GTI in collaboration with business a.m., in Lagos at the weekend, with the theme, “Prospects for Sustainable Finance and Investment in Nigeria.”

Amaeshi who was the guest speaker at the event, defined sustainable financing as finance that can contribute to the achievement of the sustainable development goals.

Explaining that finance has helped in creating some of the developmental problems we have as a nation, Amaeshi said finance can also be used as a tool to enhance corporate and national sustainability, which can be achieved by taking investment decisions that reduce the negative impacts and enhance the positive impacts of running a business.

According to Amaeshi, sustainable financiers will take into consideration geological impacts of numerous cost to running business in Nigeria, such as generator sets, boreholes, work-life balance and take investment decisions to support the reduction or elimination of such costs.

He said the country’s Financial Services Regulation Coordinating Committee (FSRCC) has begun rallying the support of the regulator’s which include the CBN, NSE, SEC, PENCOM, Federal ministry of finance, NDIC, NAICOM, FIRS among others, towards providing sustainable regulation for their industries to be implemented by year 2020.

“Irrespective of the sector you operate in as an organisation, be it insurance, banking, pension etc, there is a mandate for Nigerian organisation to fall in line with sustainable financing,” he said.

The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as a member of the sustainable stock exchanges in collaboration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and some big listed companies already champions sustainabilty, through the implementation of efficient waste management and other sustainable initiatives.

Incentives such as tax cuts, education and sensitisation of local investors were identified as measures to enhance sustainable financing.

Abubakar Lawal, group managing director and chief executive officer of GTI expressed satisfaction at the outcome of the dialogue.

According to him, the dialogue, with a vision to impact Nigeria and influence Africa, is organised monthly to help industry players make meaning out of nothing. “This session has opened my mind to the opportunities of how to make money better, it has placed more emphasis on creativity, and showed that we are the one to impact our environment,” he said.

Lawal also emphasized the need for the citizens to drive the process of sustainable financing and investment, thereby helping ourselves and the government to harness productivity and create wealth.

Also reiterating the need for sustainable finance and investment decisions, Phillip Isakpa of business a.m. in opening remarks said the newspaper teamed up with GTI because of the belief it has that discussions about Nigeria should be futuristic.

“A lot of the things that we do tend to remain bother on the present and the past, but Nigeria deserves to begin to talk about the future. Our children should be paramount in our discussions on how to move forward as a nation,” Isakpa said.