MSE moves to reach out to more people

Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) says the mobile trading project which seeks to reach out to more people with financial services is taking shape.

The project, which is one of the ways for the local shares market to advance the country’s financial inclusion agenda, is at design phase.

The project comes when majority of Malawians are still not participating in the capital market through investment on the 16-counter MSE.

In an interview on Tuesday, MSE chief executive officer John Kamanga said through the project, the local bourse wants to create wealth in line with the Malawi 2063, to ensure that many Malawians have access to financial services and investments.

He said MSE has since intensified raising of funds from within and outside the shares market.

“With the Covid-19, resources have been a challenge, but we have and continue to reach out to development partners with existing financial inclusion projects to incorporate us so as to make this project a reality,” he said.

Kamanga said through the platform, MSE will be able to reach people online without them visiting the stock exchange or brokers.

He said: “What will happen is that with their mobiles, people will be able to invest and buy securities on the stock market.

“This has already proven to be viable with evidence from the Airtel Malawi listing where investors were able to make transactions through their phones.”

Kamanga said the market wants to reach out to people left out in investment opportunities.

In his reaction, Consumers Association of Malawi executive director John Kapito said mobile trading is a huge component with potential for growth.

He said: “This development can bring more people into formal financial services. Our concern has, however, been lack of reliable and affordable services in Malawi. Malawians are currently failing to access these services on current easy platforms and we can only hope that the stock trading using mobile handsets will be smooth.”

Kapito urged MSE to ensure that it educates the masses on the trading platform.

In an earlier interview, Bridgepath Capital Limited chief executive officer Emmanuel Chokani said the initiative will help to reach out to more people to invest on the market as more people have access to mobile phones.

He said: “With mobile phones, information reaches people much more quickly. This, therefore, would give room to more people to access financial services.

“It is a good initiative and we are patiently waiting to see its roll out.”

A recent Financial Access Survey by the International Monetary Fund indicated that mobile money usage has had a profound impact on the way people access finance in Malawi and other countries within the region where banking penetration is minimal. The survey showed that mobile money agents’ growth far exceeds the growth in traditional financial access points such as bank branches in rural areas as the number of commercial bank branches per square kilometre remained less than two, the number of mobile money agents per square kilometre increased from 18 to 27.