FTSE Group has collaborated with Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers, Nigeria’s largest pension fund, on the development of the FTSE Nigeria Investable Pension Fund (IPF) Benchmark.

Jonathan Cooper, Managing Director, Research & Analytics at FTSE, said: “As FTSE’s global presence continues to expand, we are pleased to launch this new innovative benchmark featuring companies from Africa’s largest economy.”

“Corporate governance plays a vital role in all equity markets and is integral to investor confidence, leading to significant demand for benchmarks of this nature,” he said.

“This is reflected in Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers’ support during its development and immediate adoption on completion. We look forward to developing more indices for this exciting market,” he added.

The new index is the first of its kind in the region, encapsulating Nigerian listed companies while adhering to National Pension Commission (PenCom) regulation on investment, safeguarding good corporate governance for users.

Chinelo Anohu Amazu, Director General at PenCom, said: "The Commission is delighted with this commendable initiative by FTSE, as it would provide a good benchmark for Nigerian Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) and PenCom, to better assess and monitor the performance of the equities portfolio of individual pension funds."

The index has been created as a replicable index as well as a performance benchmark.

Benchmark constituents are comprised of FTSE Frontier Index Series companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which are then screened for taxable profits, dividend, free float, sector and individual stock weighting.

Demola Sogunle, Chief Executive Officer of Stanbic IBTC Pension Managers, said: “Stanbic IBTC is committed to the growth and development of the financial market. This commitment is part of the reason why we are very excited to be part of this welcome development.”

“The IPF is necessary for measurement of the performance of the equity portion of pension funds. It fulfills that need to have an index that is investable, transparent and independent. We believe that it will encourage more participation in the market as investors would be able to track companies that pension funds typically invest in,” he said.

FTSE announced the launch of the FTSE Frontier Markets Index Series in September 2014.

The benchmarks covers 26 countries defined as Frontier by FTSE’s country classification process, and captures the performance of large, mid and small cap equity securities from eligible markets.

There are 39 Nigerian companies currently included in the index.