Africa’s first vertically integrated financial market infrastructure Group, FMDQ Securities Exchange, has activated its remote operating window as it directs its employees to work from home, effective March 26, 2020.
In a notice posted on its website Wednesday, the Group’s chief executive officer, Bola Onadele. Koko, said the measure was to safeguard the company, the employees and other stakeholders amid worsening spread of the COVID-19 endemic.
Onadele further explained that the decision reflected the company’s bid to do its part to manage the pandemic and to keep employees and their families safe.
Part of the statement read: “As we navigate through this global emergency, the health and safety of our employees and stakeholders remain our top priority, and as such, we are constantly monitoring and assessing the impact of the outbreak, whilst implementing key measures to mitigate associated risks.
“Specifically, in the past weeks, FMDQ Group commenced thermal checks and the use of hand sanitisers at the entrance of our offices, Exchange Place, to prepare all employees and guests to access the building; instituted an hourly cleaning regime in the offices to protect all stakeholders; placed a travel restriction on international and more recently, local travel and practiced social distancing.
“More recently, we placed a full restriction on physical meetings for FMDQ employees at Exchange Place and other external sites; commenced the frequent dissemination of information to our employees; and activated remote working for non-critical staff, amongst other measures.
“Upon careful consideration of the situation, and in a bid to do our part to manage the pandemic and keep employees and their families safe, FMDQ Group, effective today, March 26, 2020, has activated remote working for all its employees.
“To ensure that business operations continue to run seamlessly, all employees have been equipped with adequate business communications and efficiency tools to enable them work effectively from home.
“We are fully aware that as a financial market infrastructure group in Nigeria, providing listing, trading, clearing, settlement and data & information services, our role and mandate remain critical to the functioning of the Nigerian financial markets.
“In view of this, FMDQ Group has taken deliberate steps to implement measures that will uphold the sanctity of our markets and ensure continued operational excellence.
“We have fully activated our Business Continuity Management Plan which supports all our business services and operations, allowing our Members, clients and other stakeholders to conduct their business on our platforms as normal.”
The statement said all of the trading platforms operated by FMDQ Exchange are web-based and could therefore fully support remote trading by its Members.
These include FMDQ-Bloomberg E-bond Trading System (E-bond), Thomson Reuters Foreign Exchange Trading (TRFXT) System, FMDQ Clients’ Trading, Reporting & Surveillance System (PenDealer), FMDQ Trading, Reporting and Surveillance System for FMDQ Dealing Members (Specialists) (Q-Deal) and FMDQ Futures Trading & Reporting System (FFTRS).