0ne-off selling of stocks and shares

stoibee

I have a small amount of shares with an FT listed company (worth £300-£400) which I''d like to cash-in. What are the best ways of doing this, paying minimal commission and ideally without having to set up an account with someone? I have a paper certificate for the shares.

Thanks!

oldtoolie

You could consider donating the shares to charity. See https://www.sharegift.org/

latecomer

Why would someone who wants to sell shares at minimal cost to themselves - presumably because they want to realise as much as the value as possible - want to give them away?

You need to register the shares with someone like www.x-o.co.uk and then you send them the certificate with a completed form:

http://www.x-o.co.uk/how_to_use.htm#5

edit: Not sure if its possible to sell without setting up an account with someone.

westy22

Find out who the Registrar is and ask them if they have special offers in place. Registrars such as Computershare offer online selling of shares for a reasonable fee i.e. £20, if they are the Registrar for a company.

oldtoolie

Perhaps the OP is a charity donor and would like a no hassle way to clean up their accounts. If the OP is a high earner, they would receive a Gift Aid rebate on their taxes.

stoibee

Thanks oldtoolie, but I did want to cash in my shares to fund a new tv!
latecomer - x-o.co.uk looks like the kind of service I need but when registering they wanted me to "suggest" a password (which would then very clearly be seen in my application). This didn't seem very secure to me so I emailed them for some kind of reassurance and so far have had no response. Have you or anyone used their service and would you recommend it?
Thanks all.

Annisele

I think you're going to struggle to do this without setting up an account.

No sensible broker will let you trade through them without first verifying your identity (due to money laundering rules). Once they've verified your identity, they might as well set up an account so they've somewhere to record the fact they've checked you out.

I've never used XO, but I'd assume you could change the password once the account was set up.

barak

Annisele wrote: »

I think you're going to struggle to do this without setting up an account.
No sensible broker will let you trade through them without first verifying your identity (due to money laundering rules).....

Well, perhaps not, but as suggested by westy22, my experience is that the company's registrar will generally allow you to sell small certificated holdings online just by quoting your registered address and shareholder's reference.

However, this is not the cheapest way! Examples of possible minimum charges are Equiniti £45 Computershare £30 and Capita £21.

Alex2011

oldtoolie wrote: »

You could consider donating the shares to charity. See https://www.sharegift.org/

I don't believe in charities, especially when the agents get commissions & 80% goes to charity for admin and various in house expenses.

Ifts

stoibee wrote: »

x-o.co.uk looks like the kind of service I need

Have you or anyone used their service and would you recommend it?

Yes I would recommend X-O.co.uk, been using them for some years now without any problems.

At £5.95 flat per trade its good value and from my experience it does not effect the service they provide. Before I went over to X-O my other broker used to charge 3x X-O's price per trade and honestly speaking I have not noticed no difference in service.

The bit about the password, I would not worry as you are only wanting to do a 'One-off selling', after that if you have no use for the X-O account just close it (free to close).
Or as there are no management fees or inactivity fees etc you could keep the account open and as suggested by Annisele just change the password once the account is up and running.etctcmanagement fees or inactivity fees etc