SEC highlights legitimate investments  for IOSCO World Investor Week

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to educate and steer the public toward legitimate and sound investments as it joined the celebration of World Investor Week this October.

The World Investor Week is a global campaign by the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) that encourages securities regulators to put a spotlight on efforts to promote investor protection. This year’s theme highlights the importance of investor resilience and sustainable finance.

“We’re pushing messages in relation to fraud, the risk that anyone could fall into a fraudulent trap. It doesn’t matter how wise you are, it happens to all of us,” IOSCO Secretary General Martin Moloney said in a message for the SEC’s celebration of World Investor Week.

“We’re also pushing the message of the importance of investor resilience. Markets don’t always go well, things don’t always go well in your personal life and you have to do financial planning so as to prepare for the periods when you need to be resilient when things aren’t going that well.”

This year, the SEC has already issued 75 advisories against groups and individuals who have been soliciting investment from the public without the necessary license from the Commission. A total of 115 and 126 advisories were issued in 2021 and 2020, respectively.

The Commission has seen an increase in entities offering supposed virtual currencies and play-to-earn opportunities promising high returns within short periods of time.

Most recently, the SEC cautioned the public against investing in Lodi Technologies Incorporated, which was found to be offering a supposed utility token called Lodi Coins, despite not being registered with the necessary regulatory authorities.

To counter the rise of such entities scamming and defrauding investors, the Commission is calling on the public to attend its webinars and take advantage of the educational materials it has released on legitimate investments.

As part of World Investor Week, the SEC held a two-day webinar on when and where to invest, highlighting the advantages of investing in legitimate investments such as stocks, bonds, real estate investment trusts, and mutual funds. The event also focused on the benefits of the MP2 Savings Program offered by the Home Mutual Development Fund (Pag-IBIG Fund) and the Personal Equity and Retirement Account offered by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

“Moving forward, the SEC will bring its investor education campaign to even greater heights,” SEC Chairperson Emilio B. Aquino said in the Ringing of the Bell for Financial Literacy held by the Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. on October 5.

“We are highly motivated by the call of His Excellency, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. to transform the country into an investment destination and, at the same time, transform the government into an agile bureaucracy that provides secure and seamless services to the public.”

This year, the Commission also partnered with social financial platform Investa, which operates the website Investagrams, for the conduct of a virtual trading competition that will run from October 11 to November 9, 2022.

The trading competition seeks to encourage the public to apply their learnings from SEC webinars and training sessions and translate them to real-time trading experience, without the risk of losing their hard-earned money.

Participants will be given a virtual wallet of P100,000 at the start of the competition, which they must then grow until November 9. The top 10 participants with the highest profits by the end of the competition will be awarded on the SEC Anniversary and Recognition Ceremony on November 29.

The SEC will continue to host different events throughout the month of October, as it prepares for the celebration of Investor Protection Week from November 7 to 11.

See the activities lined up for the 2022 World Investor Week and Investor Protection Week on the SEC website at www.sec.gov.ph.