Nigeria’s increasingly sophisticated and well-endowed capital markets have seen a 63% growth in mutual funds over the last four years alone. This exciting growth presents a real opportunity for every Nigerian citizen, even with limited means, to use their incomes to make additional money. 

Citizens of developed countries have traditionally enjoyed the ability to use even limited earnings and savings to augment their income while working, or to extend their earnings into retirement. These opportunities to increase and extend earnings have, traditionally, not been available to citizens of developing countries. This is because most developing countries lack the capital market infrastructure enabling safe, transparent and effective investment. 

“Capital markets are a notional space where citizens and organisations who have capital make their capital available to citizens and organisations that need capital,” says Bukola James-Cole, Head Registrar Operations, Coronation Registrars Limited. Transactions are usually managed by intermediaries in the financial system - like banks and investment and asset managers - who develop various financial products to enable this exchange. Those seeking capital use these instruments to access capital to build independent financial wealth. Those with capital use these instruments to increase their capital. 

An effective capital market is a ‘deep’ one, equipped with a wide spread of financial instruments catering to the diverse capital needs of the citizens of that market. The deeper a country’s capital market, the stronger its economy is likely to be.

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