Inherited a small number of shares

peterwstacey

Hi,

My grandfather passed away a few years ago, and my mother inherited a small number of shares in various companies on the UK stock market. This was all done in Probate, and she has the share certificates for most of them, the others seem to be electronic. We are not talking a lot of money here, about 10 companies with each individual value going from £2 to maybe £200.

My parents are thinking of selling these shares since getting paperwork for them, dividends of a few pence each year etc seems a bit silly. However, they don't even use ATMs, never mind a brokerage account. Does anyone have any tips on how they could sell these without incurring large brokerage fees?

Many thanks!

wmb194

peterwstacey said:

Hi,

My grandfather passed away a few years ago, and my mother inherited a small number of shares in various companies on the UK stock market. This was all done in Probate, and she has the share certificates for most of them, the others seem to be electronic. We are not talking a lot of money here, about 10 companies with each individual value going from £2 to maybe £200.

My parents are thinking of selling these shares since getting paperwork for them, dividends of a few pence each year etc seems a bit silly. However, they don't even use ATMs, never mind a brokerage account. Does anyone have any tips on how they could sell these without incurring large brokerage fees?

Many thanks!

Not really, double check what the registrars will charge but about the best they can do is open an account with iWeb* (£5 per trade) or X-O.co.uk (£5.95 per trade) and transfer the electronic shares and lodge the share certificates with them. The holding(s) worth £2 could be gifted to charity.

There are some cheaper brokers e.g., Freetade but you cannot lodge certificates with them. You'd need to dematerialise them first with the registrar or lodge them with another broker and then transfer them across but I'm not sure you'd want that aggravation to save £50.

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

https://www.iweb-sharedealing.co.uk/

*A trading name of Halifax Share Dealing, ultimately owned by Lloyds Banking Group.

jimjames

If it's small amounts of money and might be a hassle then one option is to donate the shares to charity and they will then deal with selling them and receiving the proceeds as a donation.

https://www.sharegift.org/
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved/donate/philanthropy/share-giving

peterwstacey

Really helpful, thanks. Asking around friends, it seems that sometimes the company can get fed up too, and lets you sell them back to the company for zero-commission, so that could be another possibility.