The National Trust Hold Company (NTHC) is marking its 40th anniversary this year with a pledge to refocus its energies on encouraging more youth to use the capital market to save and raise funds for their personal and commercial use.
It is also aiming at making pensions the key driver of its new growth strategy, which hinges on exploring opportunities in new and emerging sectors for the benefit of the company's balance sheet and the capital market in general.
After playing a leading role in the development and emergence of the financial sector and the capital market over the last four decades, the acting Managing Director of the company, Mr Francis Apanka, said the time had come for the company to restrategise in order to remain relevant in the increasingly competitive market.
In doing so, Mr Apanka said NTHC would place more emphasis on youth savings and pensions, the two vital areas that require special attention and investment, to be able to help the youth unearth their potential as key drivers of the capital market.
"One of the targets for our anniversary will be to reach out to the youth because we think that building sustainable capital markets has to begin with the basics, and that is youth savings. We are going to do that through a number of literacy campaigns through our extensive networks," he said at a news briefing on June 17, 2016.
This initiative, he says, is aimed at enticing more than 500,000 youth nationwide to save and invest.
He explained that the programmes would be launched in some selected schools later in the year to help motivate the target group "not just to save but also to invest”.
Pensions is key
While admitting that the company had over the past 40 years helped to shape the economy, the acting MD said the emergence of new sectors required that NTHC reform its mode of operations in line with the trends or risk shrinking in value.
One such area, he said, was the local pensions sector, which had started attracting global bigwigs after successfully going through some regulatory reforms in the last five years.
"The pensions sector is becoming one of the most attractive and some of the big names are finding our market attractive. So, going forward demands new strategies and it is our intention to develop that and build on it," he said.
He mentioned the informal sector as one of the areas the company would focus on to help mobilise savings while preparing the youth for retirement.
On the anniversary celebrations, Mr Apanka said various programmes would be launched in the coming days to mark the milestone in the life of the company.