Stock brokers to trade across West Africa

Qualified brokers, who meet prescribed standards, will soon have the opportunity to trade directly on any of the stock markets across West Africa.

This forms part of the second phase of the integration of the stock markets in West Africa meant to give direct trading access to brokers in the sub-region.

The Managing Director of the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), Mr Kofi Yamoah, said the second phase would grant autonomy for dealers in the member states as part of efforts to open up the market to all issuers.

“The second phase is to grant autonomy for a dealer in Ghana, for example, to be able to trade directly in a market in another jurisdiction. The dealer can certify certain additional requirements so they can participate in other markets in other jurisdictions,” he told journalists on July 6 after the 27th annual general meeting (AGM) of the GSE in Accra.

Unlike the other phases, there was no specific timeline for phase two. Mr Yamoah said the process would continue until all dealers had fulfilled the requirements and were able to trade directly.
“In terms of this, we don’t have a timeline within which it must end, it will depend on the dealer who is prepared or ready. So for example, if Ghana has 21 dealers and at any point in time two or three are ready, they take it up, until a time the others feel they are ready in terms of systems and processes,” he said.

Progress on integration

Mr Yamoah said the West African Capital Market integration project was making steady progress and in 2016, the Exchange and its licensed dealing members were active participants in both technical committee and governing council deliberations.

In august 2016, the ECOWAS Commission organised a consultative meeting between the West African Securities Regulators Association (WASRA) and West African Capital Market Integration Council (WACMIC) in Abuja, Nigeria.

The objective of that meeting was to review and agree on the governance and regulatory structure, as well as work out a framework for greater collaboration between all stakeholders, particularly WASRA and WCMIC. A follow up meeting has since been held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, to agree on the cooperation framework between WASRA and WACMIC.

The first phase

The first phase of the integration process involved giving sponsored access to brokers from other capital markets to trade securities as well as settle in markets other than the home countries.

The objective of the sponsored access was to enable entities that were not direct market operators of an exchange to participate in the exchange by granting them direct access to the exchanges’ trading facility via technology.