By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-First Registrars Nigeria Limited Thursday introduced the e-voting system for shareholders to ease the cumbersome manual voting at Annual/Extra-Ordinary General Meetings (A/EGMs).

Bayo Olugbemi, Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the company at the introduction of the e-voting said this has been put to use at several A/EGMs of First Registrars client companies.

“The e-voting system is designed to ease the cumbersome manual voting process with a more robust and reliable way of voting,” he said.

According to him, upon entry at the AGM/EGM venue, shareholders are provided with a device through which they cast their votes at the click of the appropriate buttons.

A demonstration of this at the introduction of the system to shareholders and other capital market stakeholders, InvestAdvocate could confirm that once the appropriate button is clicked, the e-voting software automatically generates the results required for the determination of the votes cast and the results were very accurate and delivered online real time.

Olugbemi affirmed that the feedback from stakeholders on the e-voting system has been tremendously positive and has encouraged First Registrars to be much more committed to its goals of providing high level innovations and quality service delivery in the capital market.

This is coming on the heels of the launch of “FirstDividend Plus Prepaid Card” to eliminate the issue of unclaimed dividend that has posed problems in the Nigerian Capital Market (NCM).

The FirstDividend Plus Prepaid Card is a premium prepaid card issued to shareholders into which dividend amount due to them are loaded/credited on the payable date.

First Registrars said the product is expected to help eliminate the problem of unclaimed dividends as shareholders can now claim all their dividends immediately, even without bank accounts.

“It is in line with our commitment to reducing unclaimed dividends,” the company said.

According to officials of the company, the FirstDividend Plus Prepaid Card can be obtained at a cost of N600.00 after the Registrar has done their Know Your Customer (KYC) verification.

They further affirmed that the validity period of the card is two (2) years and will also be reissued with a fee on expiration.