Equin* and selling shares after probate

ElmoR

Like many, we're still waiting for the probate to come through and in the meantime, trying to decide how to sort out various matters once it does happen. ...

Our Father had shares in three companies now administered by Equin***. All are relatively small numbers of shares and in the region of low £100s values -ish.

For two, I cannot find the original share certificates but have statements. For one, I have the original share certificates (BG plc) dated 1997 and 1998) but not paperwork for statements/account details. After 9 months of digging, and from no help by the company, we finally worked out that are three are Equin***. Literally, we've sent  a copy of the Death Certificate three times to the same address but for each set of shares. It's crazy in that there seems to be no joined up communication at Equin***?!

Piecing together the responses, without a share certificate we can pay a sum (£70) and sell the shares once Probate has been granted, via a postal share dealing sale. A lost certificate fee is £60. 

Does anyone know of a different way to 1. get  a copy of lost share certificates that is cheaper than £60 and 2. sell shares in a different way avoiding that £70 fee?

We don't buy/own shares ourselves, so this isn't a world that we are familiar with.

Many thanks, ElmoR

Marcon

ElmoR said:

Like many, we're still waiting for the probate to come through and in the meantime, trying to decide how to sort out various matters once it does happen. ...

Our Father had shares in three companies now administered by Equin***. All are relatively small numbers of shares and in the region of low £100s values -ish.

For two, I cannot find the original share certificates but have statements. For one, I have the original share certificates (BG plc) dated 1997 and 1998) but not paperwork for statements/account details. After 9 months of digging, and from no help by the company, we finally worked out that are three are Equin***. Literally, we've sent  a copy of the Death Certificate three times to the same address but for each set of shares. It's crazy in that there seems to be no joined up communication at Equin***?!

Piecing together the responses, without a share certificate we can pay a sum (£70) and sell the shares once Probate has been granted, via a postal share dealing sale. A lost certificate fee is £60. 

Does anyone know of a different way to 1. get  a copy of lost share certificates that is cheaper than £60 and 2. sell shares in a different way avoiding that £70 fee?

We don't buy/own shares ourselves, so this isn't a world that we are familiar with.

Many thanks, ElmoR

Bereavement process is set out on their website - not sure from what you've said if you've stumbled across(!) the relevant page: https://equiniti.com/uk/help-and-support/bereavement/bereavement-process

Getting a copy of a lost share certificate isn't quite as simple as you'd hope - and you can only get it from the registrars of the company concerned. You need to give the company's registrar an indemnity in case the original turns up and is mis-used, which is why it costs more than you might expect.

Royal Dutch Shell acquired BG Group in 2016. BG Group shareholders were given a cash payment and shares in Royal Dutch Shell as a result of the acquisition. The original British Gas shareholding has now become shares in Royal Dutch Shell, National Grid, and Centrica.

If you google  on 'selling shares cheaply' you'll get plenty of options - but they will all need you to have a share certificate where (as here) there's a paper trail involved, rather than the more modern approach of electronic shareholdings. It may be simpler and cheaper in the long run to sell via the registrars.

boingy

I suspect you are stuck with the certificate replacement fee but once you have a paper certificate then people like XO will sell the shares for £5.95 with no charge for transferring the paper certificate into their system. That assumes the XO account and certificate are in your name.

X-O.co.uk - Execution Only Share Dealing

I used them recently to sell a couple of ancient paper share holdings we had.

p00hsticks

ElmoR said:

Our Father had shares in three companies now administered by Equin***. All are relatively small numbers of shares and in the region of low £100s values -ish.

For two, I cannot find the original share certificates but have statements. 

Are you sure that the other two are actually held as paper certificates and not, as is far more common now, electronically in the CREST system ? As Marcon points out the BG certificate is now out of date and replaced by shareholdings in other companies. (I suspect your father , like me and many others, was one of those people who liked to hang on to obsolete share certificates 'just in case'.)