Nigeria has unveiled a National Vehicle Registry (VREG). The project is designed to make it easier to track vehicles, reducing car theft in Nigeria while ensuring an inter-agency database on cars in Nigeria. This is a new playbook which among other benefits is designed to generate more revenue for the nation. More so, it could boost the insurance industry vehicle premium revenue. Time to unload on insurance stocks?

Comment by Mrs Zainab Ahmed, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning: “Providing the NCS with guidance in all clearing, duties, registration and redistribution of vehicles, targeted at ensuring that all vehicles are trackable, taxable and generate more revenues.

“The integration of the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) onto VREG for aggregation and regularisation of vehicle insurance across the country.

“Communication between Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) moveable asset registry and VREG to provide dynamic records of vehicular assets, thus boosting lendability to Nigerians.”

Mr Aliyu Ahmed, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry said: “VREG portal would improve road user safety, enhance vehicle roadworthiness and improve traffic regulation enforcement.

“It will provide users, insurance firms and third parties with car facts and history of vehicles, thus creating a disincentive by ensuring that stolen, accident-wrecked and other unsafe vehicles are no longer brought into the Nigerian market.”

This is a redesign and formalization of the economy begins: all vehicle owners must be ready to pay annual taxes on their movable assets. And Nigeria can pick billions of naira on tax receipts from this.

Yes indeed, the nation needs that money as it needs funds to pay all the monies it has borrowed from the central bank especially in the last few years: “The Federal Government’s total borrowing from the Central Bank of Nigeria through Ways and Means Advances has ballooned to N15.51tn, rising by 2,286 per cent in six years, data collated from the CBN have shown.”

The N15.51tn owed by the Federal Government to the central bank is not part of the country’s total public debt stock, which stood at N33.11tn as of March 2021, according to the Debt Management Office.

The public debt stock comprises the debts of the Federal Government of Nigeria, the 36 state governments and the Federal Capital Territory.

Nigeria has an important job ahead: identity management. And that management is not just to know who is who before a bank account is opened. There is something even more critical: preventing people from using fake names and pseudonyms to buy financial products.

During the “golden years” before the Great Recession, banks were hitting initial public offers which were typically oversubscribed. For some people to capture more units, they engineered their names to get different allocations.

Unfortunately, some of those men and women have died – and magically, no one could trace their families! That is partly why Nigeria has close to N170 billion (about $410 million) unclaimed dividends.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that unclaimed dividends in the Nigerian Capital Markets rose to N170 billion as at December 2020.

This was disclosed by Director-General, SEC, Mr Lamido Yuguda, at the second post-Capital Market Committee (CMC) virtual news conference, on Friday. He added that the figure rose from N158.44 billion total unclaimed dividends as of December 2019, citing issues related to poor identity management.

It is a hard thing preventing people from doing crazy things! But I blame our primary and secondary education. Like I wrote the other day, in primary 4, some US primary schools are already introducing property rights to kids. In Nigeria, we do not care.

Do not get me wrong, we score many own-goals in the nation and some of these things have nothing to do with governments! Avoiding those own-goals may be the beginning of a national rebirth, economically.

Nonetheless, the government should not take over the dividends. Rather, this money should be invested since it came through those who have investing spirits. We can distribute the dividends to help support the companies of the future while making sure there is liquidity in case relations and families of the investors show up!

Following the growing numbers of crypto exchanges hitting it large in revenue figures, Bitpanda is in the money news again with a $263 million Series C round, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, which puts its value at $4.1 billion.

The round C, which pushed Bitpanda’s value up 3x more, comes about six months after the crypto exchange announced a $170 million Series B. The Austrian startup was valued at $1.2 billion back in March.

The round was signed earlier this month, just four months after the business gained unicorn status, TechCrunch has the report. Other participating investors include Alan Howard and REDO Ventures, with existing investors LeadBlock Partners and Jump Capital also joining the Series C.

There are a number of exchanges and trading platforms targeted at retail investors, of course, including some big U.S.-based players. But Bitpanda has been making its mark by being Europe-focused, with offices and physical tech hubs located in eight cities across the region, including Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin, Krakow, London, Madrid, Milan and Paris.

The platform has a further twist in that it lets its ~3 million users easily invest (commission-free) in precious metals (like gold) or in any established stock they fancy — in addition to encouraging individuals to hop aboard the crypto rollercoaster, which was its first focus. (The minimum investment amount set by the platform is €1.)

Despite diversification beyond crypto, a spokeswoman confirmed to us that crypto trading remains “the preferred choice” for Bitpanda’s current users, noting the Stocks trading product is still in beta. “With Bitpanda Stocks, we introduced a new way of investing in stocks and ETFs; it enables investing 24/7, any time, day or night. This is still in a beta phase, we’re adding constantly new assets. That said, stock trading is slowly picking up and increasing its share in overall trading,” she added.

More recently (in June) Bitpanda expanded into the B2B market — with a white label platform offering that lets other fintechs and banks offer trading to their own clients.

This combination of products and regional focus has helped the platform pile on new users in short order: Bitpanda says it’s “on track” to achieve 6x customer growth year over year, with revenues projected to increase sevenfold in 2021 versus the previous year.

The Series C funding will be used for international expansion and growth, per a press release, as well as going on further beefing up headcount (500+ strong at this stage), as well as on gearing up for further scaling of the business.

Commenting in a statement, Eric Demuth, co-founder and CEO, said:

“We started Bitpanda in 2014 with a clear vision: To bring investing closer to everyone, everywhere. We wouldn’t be here today without the efforts of our talented team members who are constantly “rolling up their sleeves” to make things happen. We’re grateful to share our journey with these incredible people — and that’s why a key area of focus for us is to keep strengthening our team by bringing onboard world-class talent. We’re also grateful for the vote of confidence received from our investors, old and new, in this investment round. We look forward to working together as we shape the future of finance and grow Bitpanda into the No. 1 investment platform in Europe and beyond.”

Bitpanda’s spokeswoman also told TechCrunch that international expansion and growth are “key priorities,” adding: “We’ll keep building the team, opening new offices, and launching new products as we design for scale and optimize for growth. This also means strengthening Bitpanda’s position in existing markets — such as in the DACH region, Spain, France, Italy, and Poland, and also enter new markets, such as the U.K. or the markets in Central and Eastern Europe.”

Andrew McCormack, founding partner of Valar Ventures, said the significant number of users acquired by the startup in short while is sign of larger future growth.

“We believed in Bitpanda’s potential from the beginning and we are impressed by the results that Eric, Paul, Christian and the Bitpanda team have achieved. With more than 1.2 million users acquired in the first half of 2021, impressive net revenue growth and world-class executive hires, Bitpanda stands as the living proof that hypergrowth can be achieved in a sustainable way. We’re excited to further work together to bring the world of investing [to] the fingertips of everyone, anywhere,” he said.

Good People, join me to thank  Adekunle Babasola for supporting young people to attend Tekedia Institute programs. Mr. Babasola, we thank you for your generosity and kindness. As you sojourn in markets, win more domains and territories. Thank you for funding the future. Thank you.

Good People, I am updating my topic for Aug 21 Tekedia Live from “8 Options On The Most Important Decision in Business” to “Structuring Tech Companies To Stay in Compliance and Mitigate Regulatory Risks in Nigeria”.  This is how we roll in Tekedia Mini-MBA; we adjust schedules to accommodate current events where possible.

The technical freeze on the six investment startups in Nigeria is a reminder that a playbook cannot be deemed “ready”  until the core regulatory risks are well within managed zones. In this session, I will share what we do in Tekedia Capital, and how we work to make sure our startups are in compliance.

The fact is this: we build risk mitigation and compliance into the architecture of the firm, making it possible that even if there is a regulatory somersault or perturbation, we can recalibrate within hours, and still serve customers, even when necessary working outside the jurisdictional ordinance.

Remember rule #1: do not operate with fear,  operate with knowledge and stay compliant. 

Sat, Aug 21 | 7pm WAT | Structuring Tech Companies To Stay in Compliance and Mitigate Regulatory Risks in Nigeria – Dr. Ndubuisi Ekekwe

See you in class.

Comment on LinkedIn Feed

Ndubuisi Ekekwe very necessary sir, personally I’m beginning to feel that the fourth matrix for innovation (after user needs, available technology and business value) is regulatory direction. Let’s face it, if companies like Gokada, Bamboo, Chaka, Patricia and the likes that were solving huge problems for users, building and making the most of available technology and creating value for their respective businesses could have their whole models upturned by one letter, it goes to show you that the fourth matrix for innovation needs to be a strong regulatory focus.

It’s kind of getting clear now why companies like Google and Facebook hire policy roles when they enter new climes, and why they’re exceptionally focussed on the nitty gritty of regulation and policy direction to avoid trouble.

Dangote and the likes don’t have a problem, their businesses are within proper regulatory terrain. Our generations technology companies must find ways to follow suit (or at least have fail proof backup plans).