The Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of Collapsed Fund Management Companies is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to concurrently carry out the proposed validation process of their claims alongside payment of locked up funds.
It was the expectation of the affected customers that they would receive their monies as government started paying customers of the defunct savings and loans and micro finance companies.
But the SEC says they would have to wait a little longer due to some significant discrepancies detected between the value of claims filed by investors, and the records of the defunct fund management firms.
Speaking to Citi Business News however, Joseph Ayitey, Secretary for the Coalition, said the regulator’s position at this time is unfortunate.
“It is very unfortunate that we are receiving this news after we have waited for almost two years for our funds, since 2018 that this whole crisis started. It is just a matter of the regulator stating that after reviewing the list that is with us, this is not the amount we are owing, but rather we are owing you this amount. The point is that, if now you are saying that you are going to validate, what kind of validation are you going to do? But in any case, it could also be that per the records that we are also holding, our figure is the true reflection of what is on the ground. So, it is a matter of commencing payment. If they start the payment and there is any variance to deal with, individual customers will look at the situation and deal with the variance,” he said.
Aggrieved customers
Members of the Coalition of Aggrieved Customers of the defunct 53 Fund Management Companies earlier this month called on government to commence payment of their locked up funds before March 24, 2020.
According to the group, the government has sidelined customers of the collapsed fund management companies in the payment of depositors monies following the financial sector clean-up.
But the Deputy Director-General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC, Paul Ababio, assured the investors that they would soon have access to their funds when their claims are successfully validated.
He explained that a process to validate the claims submitted by investors is ongoing and when completed, payments will commence.
“We received claims; we gave up to January. What we have to go through now is the validation process. Along with that is also ascertaining the value of the claims to ensure that the claims that are reflected in the firms’ books are as we have received as well. And coming out of that, we are also in touch with the government obviously about the allocation of resources to ensure that the right sums are available, obviously to pay.”
