Q1: Give me some highlights of Proshare Nigeria over the past 15 years. What was the initial concept of the brand for the Nigerian investment market? 

Ans: Proshare was founded in December 2006 with the sole aim of making financial information readily available to every investor in such a way as to empower them to make intelligent investment decisions; and build a discerning retail market, considered critical for a viable capital market. 

This motive was premised on the informed realisation that, critical Nigeria’s growth was the need to grow individual wealth building opportunities as well as an informed retail market for the growth of industry; a combination of which would ensure consumption growth needed for the economy through a capital mobilisation drive that works for all. 

The purpose of the service, Proshare sought to offer was to enable “intelligent investing” rather than act based on hearsay. This faced challenges that resonated with the trajectory of the key indices/objectives set out earlier. To bridge this gap, we had to learn under difficult circumstances that a constant reinvention of self to meet readers and investor’s needs was critical to match market changes that was driven more by external factors than the internal rate of change in the market could cope with, especially the regulatory leg. 

In essence, we knew Fifteen years ago, that Proshare had to be set up to deliver a retail market that had the information required to make intelligent investment decisions. This would require challenging the status quo and equally help in a collaborative manner to help stakeholders deliver on a mission that overcame limiting and process/structures that needed to change. 

We became the change we sought…and not just a news and information service. This was the hardest part. 

This was however possible because, at Proshare, change is normal; and understanding trends is what we do. The structure of Proshare was therefore unconventional and, in some ways, difficult to explain, but we persevered. 

Q2: How impactful has Proshare Nigeria service offering been over the years for investors, analysts, the governments, and other users? 

Ans: Over the last decade, we have evolved while serving as a critical bridge between investors and the market, by being the most credible, reliable, and timely provider of financial intelligence and data-critical information for which discerning users, both locally and globally engage our markets; offering independent analysis and serving as the voice of the market on critical issues.  

We have done this through the development of platforms, processes, strategic partnerships, and a dedicated team of professionals that continue to push themselves to ensure they surpass the expectations of clients, subscribers and our multiple followers. 

Achieving this milestone in Nigeria where credibility is difficult to sustain has been quiet challenging and indeed revealed Proshare’s corporate character.  

Additionally, the increasing pace of the digital economy has led to stiffer competition across service points which meant that Proshare needed to keep on reinventing itself to keep up with the demand of customers and clients.  

The reward for this has been the growth of our knowledge base as a firm, the loyalty of our people, the trust placed in us by our customers and clients, and the opportunity to remain a critical bridge between investors and markets, regulators and the consuming public while shaping conversations and cultures that encourage market players to remain accountable in a collaborative manner. 

In the last 15years we have produced over 200 reports, worked with various clients and partners within the economic and financial landscape; and received recognitions and awards from local and international organsations. 

Q3: Why are you transforming into simply Proshare? What are you aiming at? 

Ans: Fifteen years is a long time to learn and unlearn what works and what is needed for the market in tandem with our vision.  

Thus, ahead of our 15^th year anniversary precisely in 2018, it was understood that we would apply the FRC rule of 10 years on ourselves and the founder had to give way and introduce a succession plan for a market had moved from one generation to another. 

We onboarded the Founder/CEO to the post of a non-executive Chairman with a 3year mandate to find a successor and a succession management team which we did. 

By 2019, we responded to an assessment on the market of the future and realized that the service had a 3–4-year window to remain relevant to its goal by making wholesome changes to its strategy, coverage areas, processes, and people types. This led to the decision to do three things – 

1. Make executive management changes and work process reforms.
2. Initiate the transformation plan for the service for the market envisaged; and
3. Commission a long term technological change that will deliver a shift in the role of financial information providers, analysts and tech solutions to one that will aggregate the possibilities of what the future holds – an empowered retail market that has all the information in a way where they are in control of decisions made, respect/regard the professionals who deliver standard-backed advisory and a regulated market that is growth led and not reactive.   

Proshare therefore understood that it must become the end of the search of information in such a way that it can act as a repository of the information needs of a new generation; yet act as the progenitor of the changes needed from the regulatory and the perception end. 

This is a difficult balance to achieve but one we were willing to invest in and commit to. 

Transforming into a digitally enhanced metaverse of professional activities augmented by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) was the way to go and the journey started on May 1, 2022 ( 3 days after our planned launch on Apr 28, 2022).  

The challenges ahead are enormous and many but the key is that we have built a plug into our customers’ experience journeys and intend to continually preempt their needs. How well we succeed is not as important as how well we lay the path for the inevitable transformation needed; and for which we are willing to risk it all. 

These changes are not merely physical, even as we see the domain and rebrand changes, the real change lies in the service approach, mindset, and delivery on our side. On the markets side, it will manifest in ways we can explain it away using traditional lingos, but it will mostly be evident in 3 areas – regulatory changes, customer definition and interface changes: as well as information journalism and interaction with the public changes.  

For the change in our corporate identity and domain name that led to this discussion; this is the easy part and one that was inevitable giving the original intent. While this will offer more value to our clients, subscribers, and partners in the medium term; the real change will be the shift in control of who drives investor information in an independent, inventive, audacious, simple, and credible manner going forward. 

Q4: What are the distinguishing features of the new Proshare digital home offering? 

Ans: The new platform is the basics we require for a phased transition to an AI/ML Enabled Platform. In effect, we are almost starting anew, only backed with the data and practice resources garnered over the past 15years. 

The delivery of the new platform however will be agile and phased to enable us update the various features we intend to deploy, most especially the machine learning (ML) component which will be better trained to deliver more value to you as you continue to use the platform. The goal is AI for market intelligence. 

The platform is configured to be different from the previous ones because it is offers robust personalization and search features that will enable users customize their experiences with news, analysis and market data on various asset classes, and optimised investor relations pages for listed entities.  

The platform also has a new ReportCentral - a store of reports from the firm which will be built to carry high-quality reports from both staff writers and other leading professional brands and personnel. 

More importantly, it recognizes changes in players and the need for a collaborative approach that elevates other value-added services providers interest in the new market we see. We will be a preferred partner to others in the ecosystem. 

Q5: Tell me about the medium-to-long-term outlook for the new Proshare. What should subscribers and other users look forward to? 

Ans: As said earlier, the aim of transforming to a simpler and smarter platform is to transition to a platform with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.  

Proshare, in the main, transitioned into a five-service hub focused on: 

• digital media, 
• investor relations, 
• impact research, 
• market intelligence, and 
• strategic advisory. 

The first phase which we recently launched are the basics which we need to complete the phased transition to an AI/ML-enabled platform for the digital media service, upon which the other services relies on for data and analytics.

Subscribers should look forward to increased access to impactful research, market intelligence and data analytics critical to strategic hidden-value investing. 

Most importantly, as said earlier, - the goal is to develop a digital platform that puts the user in control of the information needed to win in an ever changing, complex and dynamic marketplace.

Thank you.