By Dipo Olowookere
The Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited, Mr Temi Popoola, has made a case for a digitally inclusive capital market structure.
He argued that this would save time and resources, sustain a symbiotic relationship and strengthen partnerships among stakeholders.
Speaking at a webinar organised by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) themed Digital platforms: A new frontier for capital market inclusion on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, Mr Popoola enjoined stakeholders in the capital market to engage deeply with new tech tools, organisations, and partners (locally and globally).
He noted that the exchange realized this early as the management kept the market running last year when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and stakeholder thought the stock exchange would be shut down because of the global health crisis.
“Technology facilitated our immediate transition to working from home and remote trading to help the nation stem the rising negative impact of COVID-19.
“We provided brokers with access to the requisite platforms to trade remotely and seamlessly including FIX Protocol, X-NET and Virtual Private Network (VPN), with no downtime and all these pushed the NGX to emerge as one of the best-performing markets in the world,” he said.
Mr Popoola further said, “The journey for us at the exchange is one of digital transformation. To achieve this, we would need to work collaboratively across the capital market ecosystem, to drive this objective inclusively through technologies such as machine learning, Artificial Intelligence amongst others. This is the future we see at NGX.”
He stressed that the increase in data collection and analysis recorded in the global markets presents an opportunity for Nigeria’s capital market to achieve key sustainable development targets across other sectors of the economy via digital transformation.
Mr Popoola explained that as the digital economy, driven by unprecedented capacity for data collection and analysis continues to grow at an exponential rate, the opportunity for African economies to leapfrog in financial inclusion and achieve key sustainable development targets across other sectors of the economy is becoming more apparent.
He noted that digital platforms power the most successful businesses in the world today and by leveraging digital platforms, these companies have achieved growth on an exponential scale, almost 10 times that of some competition.
The NGX chief said digital transformation is a required step for Nigerian’s capital market to further deepening financial literacy and increased the contributions of the capital market to national development.
“Having a digitally inclusive capital market structure would save time and resources, sustain a symbiotic relationship and strengthen partnerships among stakeholders,” he said.
Adedapo Adesanya 
Modupe Gbadeyanka