Cordros Asset Management Limited, a financial service group in African markets has announced the winners of its 2024 ‘Every Child a Milestone Fund Debate’ competition with the presentation of hundred thousand naira seed fund to the winners recently in Lagos.
Speaking on this development yesterday in Lagos, the Managing Director of Cordros Asset Management, Gbolahon Aina disclosed that, today, we are having “every child a milestone fund” debate, this is the third time we are having the debate, and the essence is to promote financial literacy, among the youths, noting that, in Nigeria, financial literacy among the adult is about 38% which means a lot of people don’t know simple things like budgeting and how to go about investment.
According to him, “as an organisation, we decided to start teaching children about financial literacy through this initiative and what we are able to do is to teach them about financial principles and also have them compete among each other.”
Continuing, he said, “for this edition, we have two schools which include Grace High Schools, Gbagada, Lagos State, and Lagoon Secondary School, Lekki, Lagos State. The two schools talked about short term and long term investment and to be honest, it was very interesting and both school did excellently well.”
While explaining whether the campaign is a national campaign or it’s restricted to Lagos State alone, the Managing Director confirmed that, the initiative is actually a national campaign because they had the Abuja and Portahcout segmenst earlier in the week, adding that, aside from the debate, the organisation will be going from school to school nation wide and teach students about financial literacy.
Providing answer to question on how the schools that participated were selected, he disclosed that, “we sort of looked at schools that have done very well, and we sent invitation to a number of them and the first schools that responded were the ones we scrutinized and eventually invited.
Speaking on the theme for this year’s edition: “invest in your future” he said; “I think for all parents, it’s better they start teaching their children about investment as early as possible, and that’s why one of things we learned today is about compounding your interest, if you are able to teach a child how to compound interest early, the child will appreciate that later in life.
“It”s one thing to teach person how to invest, it’s easier when you give seed or capital to invest and that is what we want to achieve by providing seed fund to the winners of this contest and it’s going to be invested in our mutual fund which is called the milestone fund.” He added.
At the event, a staff of Cordros Asset Management, Ikechukwu Osuchukwu who took participants on how to invest disclosed that, while going into investment, a potential investor is supposed to be knowledgeable so that an investor will be able to measure the risk involved in the kind of investment he or she is going into.
According to him, a potential investor should be careful with investment that promises a mouth watering return on investment, advising that, trend that is not driven by knowledge could be dangerous, stating that, a potential investor should understand time horizone, whether he or she is going into short or long term investment.
Also, he said starting early is very important because that guarantees high return on investment, adding that, potential investors must be stragic, reduce cost, plan well, should not put their eggs in one basket, avoid people who create panic, avoid overconfidence and lack of information among other factors that could make investment not to be successful.
Speaking on what she learned, a debators, Shobagmi Oluwateniola from Grace High Schools said she learned a lot about financial literacy especially on why it’s important to start early, adding that, she will prefer to go for a long term investment.
On her part, Olaoluwa Fashebemi, a co debator from Lagoon Secondary School said she had an amazing experience, noting that, they actually came for a debate competition not knowing that, they will be exposed to a full blown lecture on financial literacy.
While announcing the results, Nkechi Ofoegbu, Head, Corporate Services, Cordros Asset Management pointed out that, Lagoon Secondary School scored 77.4,.% while Grace High Schools scored 62.5% and Lagoon Secondary School was declared winner of the contest.
