Trying to wrap my head around old paper share certificates (what to keep) for an elderly relative.

jscol

Why not just put the whole lot online?
I was in a similar situation last year. 
Having everything available electronically let me get rid of loads of paper. 

JGB1955

You won't be able to sell certificated shares without having the physical bits of paper. I wouldn't destroy any of them. They cost hundreds of pounds to replace.

MX5huggy

jscol said:

Why not just put the whole lot online?
I was in a similar situation last year. 
Having everything available electronically let me get rid of loads of paper. 

What was the cost of this? I looked it seemed to be expensive for multiple small holdings in different companies. I know National Grid are always trying to get my mum to give up her small holding presumably because the admin of sending her a cheque twice a year is disproportionate. 

underground99

MX5huggy said:

jscol said:

Why not just put the whole lot online?
I was in a similar situation last year. 
Having everything available electronically let me get rid of loads of paper. 

What was the cost of this? I looked it seemed to be expensive for multiple small holdings in different companies. I know National Grid are always trying to get my mum to give up her small holding presumably because the admin of sending her a cheque twice a year is disproportionate. 

There are a number of execution-only brokers who don't charge an ongoing admin fee, instead hoping you'll incur enough buying or selling charges from time to time to make it worth their while giving you an account.

An example is Jarvis's service, www.x-o.co.uk. It costs nothing to establish your account and transfer in your paper certificates by filling out a form for each. You can then monitor them online and sell or buy more at your leisure, but the costs to sell when they already hold your shares electrically will be lower than if you were approaching a new broker and asking to sell off paper certificates.

jscol

The shares I had to deal with were BT, BP, National Grid, Shell and one other. 
The registrar for most of them was Shareview Equiniti (not BP). There was instructions on various paper documents how you could register them online. It was very easy although I realise might not be directly applicable to your circumstances. 

sanfairyanne

Thanks folks, those links were especially helpful. LHW99 I can feel your pain having to sort through all those share certs' alongside spam mail. My mother has been registering for online share certification unfortunately though she's never kept the password, username or a even a note of which email she used. I'm slowly getting to the bottom of it. It's also depressing seeing how much her portfolio has dropped, mostly due to retail and banking shares.