Paper share - help to register!

Disjoint

Hi all, so for almost two years now I promised my FIL to register all his paper shares. I signed up with Hargreaves Lansdown to do this, but they have suspended the service due to Covid, and for the good part of two years have yet to re-open it or have any view of re-opening it. Any other broker that register paper shares online? As he never trades I don't really care about brokerage fees, if the service takes care of all the faff on his behalf sign me up (London based).
My FIL has hundreds of tiny paper shares (he was collecting his BP dividend in shares not cash for example....) It's driving me absolutely nuts.

My MIL passed away and left £5k of paper shares, we can't find those - and I've been waiting for his brokerage account to be set up and all his shares to be registered there to start the painful process of calling the registrars and paying the fees for lost certificates as well as dealing with the probate part on those paper shares... I just wanted to at least do his shares and have the confidence and know how of dealing with them before taking care of his late wife's shares...

Any help information etc... Much welcome. He is coming to visit next week (we live abroad) and would be nice to tell him I have found a solution. I'll be in the UK over Christmas as well and could help him with all the paper work; althought, I'll try to have my wife deal with that but I am the ex stock broker in the family and all this finance stuff usually fall on my shoulders ))

By regitering paper share - I mean converting all shares to electronic shares so that they are available on a brokerage platform and if he wanted to sell/buy etc... he would be able to do it online. I've put him onto online banking two years ago, and he has really caught on to the computer, so would be a good thing for him to be able to see all his assets on one platform.

Thrugelmir

X-O are a viable option.

https://www.x-o.co.uk/

No charge for conversion of paper share certificates.  

Disjoint

Thrugelmir said:

X-O are a viable option.

https://www.x-o.co.uk/

No charge for conversion of paper share certificates.  

Thank you very much for this, I was under the impression that HL were one of the only ones around doing this... Realised that the broker I use for my ISA (IG) also does that. I will contact XO and IG tomorrow and make sure they are not using Covid as an excuse not to provide this service. Thank you again!

maxsteam

a couple of additional points...

Yes, you are transferring the shares to electronic form or to a nominee account. You are not registering the shares. The certificates are already registered with the registrar. The terminology is important if you are searching for brokers who provide this service. I agree that x-o (Jarvis) are worth looking at.

There is a fee for replacing lost share certificates. It is too much imho but the only other option I know of is to wait for a corporate event in which new certificates are issued but this option is unlikely to suit your circumstances or your holdings. If there's no rush though, it might be worth waiting until the time when all drawers, boxes and cupboards have been searched before ordering replacement certificates.

refluxer

I've also been meaning to get round to this for a while. Halifax Sharedealing are another option for paper certificates - they currently offer a service with no annual fees (£12.50 dealing fee) but are introducing a yearly £36 charge from April 2022. They are reducing their dealing fee to £9.50 so only those who deal more than once a month will be better off. I don't, so may close my Halifax account ahead of the charge and look at x-o instead.

Disjoint

Thank you all - IG charges £100 PER certificate.
X-O is free, just called them and will get my FIL to register with them.

Just checked all shares are with EQUINITI, COMPUTERSHARE and SHAREVIEW

Which are all UK registrars I believe, so all good. He has a paper share with of a US company, I won't bother with that.

Disjoint

Hi all - wanted to give an update.
Hargreaves Lansdown re-opened their share services two weeks ago. 
I sent all the paper shares that we had - they received them this morning, this afternoon they were on the account and my FIL can see all the positions already.
They are always there to answer my phone calls. Honestly, I am amazed at their service. All I can say is well done. A few of those shares will be gifted, and while XO only allows gift to spouse, HL allows you to gift to kids and they make it super easy.

I came with the biggest apprehension of having to deal with all those share certificates, while I can't say I'd like to do it again, having just gone through the process was a LOT easier than I thought.

Apodemus

Disjoint, thanks for the update.  I had been putting off a similar exercise in the hope that HL would re-open the service, but hadn't checked for a couple of months.  I'm still nervous of trusting the certificates to the postal service, but guess that this is a risk that I just have to take.

refluxer

@Disjoint Did you send the paper share certificates by Royal Mail's Signed For, Tracked or Special Delivery services and if so, which option did you use ?

I was struggling to determine whether the standard compensation offered with these options would cover the charge for issuing replacement certificates if they get lost in the post (which, in my case, could amount to a few hundred pounds) but I'm thinking probably not as the certificates themselves have no inherent value, in which case the cheapest (Signed for) option would possibly be just as good as any of the others ?

The 'Consequential Loss' option available with the Special Delivery service may cover the replacement certificate fees, but then the overall charge starts to get a bit out of hand.

I didn't use to worry about this years ago, however Covid has really impacted on the postal service - in my area at least - with 1st class items taking weeks to arrive and parcels piling up at local depots and even going missing. 

Disjoint

@refluxer and @Apodemus

Sending a bunch of certificates and worrying about them getting lost clearly crossed my mind. If you are worried about this, I would make a note of all the certificates you have in an excel spreadsheet and put the share certificate number next to it before sending them off, just in case. In the event that they do get lost, you will have to contact Equiniti, Computershare etc... to get them to replace the certificate, which is clearly not cheap, but a worst case scenario. On my side I used Royal Mail and asked them to have tracked and signed delivery - it got there without a hitch. That said, if you are definitely concerned about that, they are based in Bristol so I would suppose you could even hand deliver yourself, or break it into a couple of batches. Maybe DHL might be a safer option, not entirely sure. I simply did a track and sign which did the trick.

At present there are a few share certificates that had been lost with time, so I am in the process of filling out indemnity forms. Best one yet: having to send a cheque of £76 for a share certificate worth £250. It's not cheap... Also if the shares are registered under a nominee account with Equiniti or Computershares - Hargreaves Lansdowne has the form you need to fill out directly on their website and you will need to attach a cheque of either £10 or £17 to move them to Hargreaves Lansdowne (again they were super helpful on the phone and helped me locate the form I needed). I had to do that for two stocks my FIL held in this form - the paper certificate was actually easier to transfer and were almost instantly on the account. HL has informed me the nomineed transfer will likely take three week.
Regarding lost certificates: Filling out the indemnity forms at the moment, I am still in the process of doing this, but fortunately 7/8th have now been dealt with, it's just 1/8th of his shares that is taking me the biggest amount of time.

Dedicate one weekend to it, and you'll feel much better when it's done!

Open an HL account, fill a CREST transfer form for each paper certificate and that's it really.
It takes 4 days to settle on the account, so this Monday my FIL will be able to start trading them if he so wishes (They were lodged on Tuesday). His tax accounting will definitely be much easier being able to get statements of dividends...