The purpose of issuing notices and directives by financial market regulators is to provide effective information to existing and potential investors to avoid and extricate themselves from unacceptable investment schemes. Lack of information and perhaps ineffective communication about amoeba – like investment schemes does not yield good results.
Financial market regulators do not issue notices just because they must do. They do not issue notices merely to provide evidence they have done their part.They do so to inform and change a trend.
How and when the notice was issued is very important. Also it is a common characteristic of financial market regulators that they are always late so by the time they issue notices many have already been captured . If the notices are not well communicated, such notices even when issued in quick succession will not discourage citizens from further investments. We are in a country where Only a few people can routinely read these notices in the news papers and from the website of the regulator.
This notices, given that in the mist of the many disturbing effects of unlicensed deposits taking financial institutions, many more are emerging, implying that the ORIGINATORS are not law abiding citizens and the notices don’t get to a lot of people who patronize these schemes. For effectiveness all faith based organizations, transport unions, and others should support the regulators by making these notices as part of their routine announcements. This is very important because majority of the operators and investors or depositors are members of these organizations.
The scale of the problem created by these schemes is very alarming and additional measures should be taken to ensure that any information from regulators is effective.
When notices are given after people made investments such investments are already endangered. When the warning notices are not circulated effectively, people will continue to patronize them.. In an environment of ineffective investment warning notices and weak financial literacy, innocent investors become victims and not criminals.
Let us think about a situation where the Catholic Church and the Church of Pentecost for example read warning notices from BoG to the congregation on Sunday, the effect can be great. Society has changed let us all be willing to support the regulator to make impact with their warnings. Let the regulator be informed that the media may announce these notices which have become defensive tools. Many Ghanaians will get to know these important notices through other channels which will make more impacts. Ghanaians who are not on social media are more than those active on social media. In fact some don’t even download pdf documents.
Let investment victims be treated as victims and not with painful descriptions. A social problem with young people, widows, prospective entrepreneurs and the aged have emerged, we should be willing to solve it.
