Selling shares as executor

Dot18

My mum recently passed away and left shares in 6 different companies that Equiniti deal with. My brother and I are executors - we’ve registered the death and would now like to sell them. We can do this directly with Equiniti but they charge 1.9% with a minimum of £70 for each company - the value of the share varies from about £200 with Lloyds to £12000 with Prudential and a total of approx 38000. I calculate it would be about £860 to sell them (3 fairly small amounts so selling at a higher percentage due to the minimum £70) and 1.9% of the rest). All the shares are quite old but we have the share certificates. 

- Are there more reasonable options?
- can we use them as executors without having to transfer names etc? 

Many thanks

wmb194

Dot18 said:

My mum recently passed away and left shares in 6 different companies that Equiniti deal with. My brother and I are executors - we’ve registered the death and would now like to sell them. We can do this directly with Equiniti but they charge 1.9% with a minimum of £70 for each company - the value of the share varies from about £200 with Lloyds to £12000 with Prudential and a total of approx 38000. I calculate it would be about £860 to sell them (3 fairly small amounts so selling at a higher percentage due to the minimum £70) and 1.9% of the rest). All the shares are quite old but we have the share certificates. 

- Are there more reasonable options?
- can we use them as executors without having to transfer names etc? 

Many thanks

Have a look at this thread; tl;dr apart from Equiniti, finding a broker to trade with you as an executor is difficult so transfer them into your name and then sell them via x-o.co.uk for £5.95 per trade. Edit: Given it's currently waiving its account opening fee, iWeb, ultimately owned by Lloyds, is another option for £5.00 per trade.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6363983/selling-certified-share-certifcate-after-probate/p1

Reed_Richards

You could just transfer the shares to the beneficiaries and let them sell them if they want to.

Dot18

thanks - almost one and the same - my brothers and I are executors and beneficiaries are ourselves and one other brother who has declined to act as executor as he’s abroad (and generally not comfortable dealing with things like this so that would include selling shares. We have an executors account where we’re collecting all funds that we’ll then just split three ways. If either myself or my brother transferred the share to our name to sell would that then not count as income for us and affect our tax return etc? How would we show it was as an estate executor rather than personal trading?  Thanks