…SECZIM talks of Capital Market Development Plan
By ETimes
CBZ Bank has become the fourth player in the country to set up a custodial trustee service that will offer a wide range of services to both institutional and individual traders on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE) and Victoria Falls Stock Exchange (VFEX).
In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZim) registered CBZ Bank as a trustee for collective investment schemes, bringing the total number of registered trustees to four.
The trustee is essentially an extension of the SECZim’s regulatory branch. In terms of providing high levels of investor protection, fostering market integrity and investor confidence, avoiding market manipulation, fraud, and financial crime, and maintaining transparency in capital markets, the trustee function matches the goals of SECZim.
As part of the wide range of asset management services offered by financial institutions, the importance of trust services is expanding on a global scale.
CBZ Bank Managing Director Lawrence Nyazema told stakeholders at the launch that this marks a significant development that strengthens the commitment of the bank to consistently offer customer-centric goods and services.
“This is an area of huge growth locally and even beyond as significant investments are estimated to capitalize the market over the next few years,” he said.
“It is imperative that we are strategically positioned to participate in the significant initiatives that drive growth and underline CBZ’s commitment to the development of the Zimbabwe economy and emerging markets.”
He said due to the unpredictability of the operating environment, the bank constantly encounters new demands, growing skill set requirements, sophisticated client expectations and new technical breakthroughs.
“Thus, our traditional lines of business consciously stretch into new areas and new business models, and these opportunities quicken the Bank to reflect and reconsider its strategies going forward to remain relevant,” he said.
“That is why the introduction of the CBZ Trustee Services is a timely one.”
With this initiative, he said, CBZ Bank is essentially putting itself in a position to collaborate with participants in the capital market at any level of the economy.
“Trustee Services is coming at a time whereby we believe our thrust for creating successful partnerships can be a strengthening pillar from the growth that we anticipate in the next five years.
“We anticipate significant implications from both a revenue generating perspective and infrastructure development perspective,” he said.
SECZIM chief executive officer Anymore Taruvinga said they have been facilitating the growth of the capital market through the registration of new participants and the approval of new capital market products.
“We have a healthy pipeline of other ETFs and REITs at various stages of registration by SECZim and the expectation is that Trustee services will continue to be on demand in the short to medium term,” he said.
“These new products are also coming at a time when we are witnessing regulatory and policy changes in the capital markets.”
He said capital markets are crucial to the health of any economy and their expansion should be praised.
“Our desire as a Commission is to have a properly framed Capital Market Development Plan that can be agreed and adopted at the National level. That way policy makers, market intermediaries, regulators and investors will have a shared vision that will help guide policy formulation and the overall direction we should take as a country.”
Such strategies have been successfully carried out in Kenya and Nigeria.
According to SECZim, 19 different players have registered on the capital markets this year alone. Five of these 19 participants are collective investment plans.
There are currently 65 collective investment schemes in existence, managing $55.6 billion in total. There were 80276 unitholders in these funds as of the third quarter of 2022 – Harare