What to do with late Mother's low value shares?

hamster99

I'm executor for my late mother and she had a very small nuber of shares in both Lloyds Bank and Santander Bank, I think she was given them free at some point for having accounts with other banks they took over. Total value is about £300 (£120 & £180)

The shares are held in a nominee account managed by Equiniti who have sent me all the forms to sell the shares. However, there is a charge of £60 each holding for selling the shares, and there is also a charge of £70 each because I cannot provide share certificates. To be honest I don't ever remember my Mother having share certificates and she was very good at keeping paperwork. I also thought nominee accounts meant you didn't receive share certificates because your shareholdings are registered.

So, if I sell the shares, her estate will be better off by around £40, not worth the effort and my time to fill in the forms really.

My thoughts are whether there is another way to do some good with the shares, for example can they be donated to a charity without Equiniti charging almost the full value of the shares?

Marcon

If you've lost the certificates, you can donate up to £100 of shares without the usual requirement for indemnity etc: https://www.shareview.co.uk/4/Info/Portfolio/Default/en/Home/Shareholders/Documents/SharegiftTransfer.pdf

That might get you round (at least some) of the problem if your mother held several different lots of shares in one or other bank, so that the value of the individual donation would be under £100.

xylophone

http://www.sharegift.org/equiniti/
Might assist.

stefan_mse

I had exactly this problem with these two shares when my mother died.  I think the prices you quote are for postal share dealing but when I phoned them up they suggested creating an Equiniti account as the executor, transferring the shares to them and then selling them using online dealing, which cost around £12.50 a company I think.  (In fact as the LLoyds holding was less than £10 they waived the charge for that.)

wizzywilc

I've used Sharegift twice, and it was very easy.
I did sell what I thought was all of a smallish shareholding through Equiniti  (using the postal service) and was annoyed to find a few months later to find that there was still a shareholding worth about £14, which I donated. A couple of months later I received a dividend cheque for 47 pence, which, with beneficiaries consent, I destroyed.

JCR982

If the holdings are in nominee account then there wouldn't be share certificates (?)  You can pay £10 per holding and complete I think a Form B to have them transferred into your/beneficiaries name.  But you would still have to pay to sell them.