Aberdeen share certificates

PoGee

Do Aberdeen do digital share certificates? My ones sometimes get lost in the post and when I call them up, they say there's a fee for a duplicate one, with the fee being dependent on the holding. When I called them last year, they said they didn't do digital certificates which is strange for this day and age - wondering if this has changed. They want to charge me around £35 for a lost in the post certificate. Do they do a confirmation of holding letter or email instead? I'm in their divided reinvestment scheme so expect a share certificate twice a year.

PoGee

PS, when I sell them, do I need to provide every single paper certificate?

wmb194

PoGee said:

Do Aberdeen do digital share certificates? My ones sometimes get lost in the post and when I call them up, they say there's a fee for a duplicate one, with the fee being dependent on the holding. When I called them last year, they said they didn't do digital certificates which is strange for this day and age - wondering if this has changed. They want to charge me around £35 for a lost in the post certificate. Do they do a confirmation of holding letter or email instead? I'm in their divided reinvestment scheme so expect a share certificate twice a year.

PoGee said:

PS, when I sell them, do I need to provide every single paper certificate?

The plan is to eventually do away with paper certificates but they're not digital yet*. You can lodge your certificates with a broker via its nominee account and have your dividends reinvested in those.

Yes, you'd need to provide certificates to account for every share you want to sell. The big downside of certificated holdings is when certificates are lost...

*https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/digitisation-taskforce-july-2025/digitisation-taskforce-final-report-july-2025-accessible

PoGee

Thanks wmb194. I'm with Equiniti - it's a shame that they (Aberdeen) don't just log the certs with them on my online portal. I've held these shares for around 20 years (think they were Standard Life initially??) so bit daunting to look for them all.

wmb194

PoGee said:

Thanks wmb194. I'm with Equiniti - it's a shame that they (Aberdeen) don't just log the certs with them on my online portal. I've held these shares for around 20 years (think they were Standard Life initially??) so bit daunting to look for them all.

Aberdeen's registrar, Equiniti, is only following your instructions i.e. to issue certificates and not pay the dividends as cash. You should lodge them with a stockbroker e.g., iWeb (soon to be Scottish Widows Share Dealing, part of LBG) if you don't want the hassle of dealing with certificates.

Being able to see your holding in Equniti's online portal (Shareview) doesn't meant they're not certificated, it's just a summary of your holdings. If you tried to sell them via Equiniti you'll still be asked to post your certificates.

If you're referring to Equiniti's stockbroker, EQi, you can lodge your certificates with it and dematerialise them that way.

See the Crest transfer form on this page: https://eqi.co.uk/info/forms