Shares advice

Many companies' constitutional documents allow for shareholdings to be uncertificated.

At the end of the day, a certificate is merely a piece of paper which certifies that at a particular point in time, you were recorded on the register of members as having been the owner of that number of shares. It is the actual shareholder register itself (of which your certificate is merely a snapshot extract) which determines who gets to vote, who gets dividends etc.

Not having the piece of paper doesn't change your rights -unless they're "bearer shares" where nothing is recorded in the register and whoever has the shares in their pocket at a moment in time is the owner of the company ; that's archaic and most jurisdictions in the world including the UK don't allow it.

So, it's not necessarily the case that the company *must* have sent you a certificate because the certificate doesn't give you practical ownership rights, it's merely evidence that those rights existed. But if a certificate had been issued to you, which it might not have been in a close company by family members, it can be very useful in later debates about the shareholder register.

If you have evidence that you owned X number of shares on Y date, and then later they say you no longer own the shares, they'd have to produce the share register and show when and how the shares were transferred away from you. Whereas, if you've never had any documentation, it's quite easy to screw you over by saying you've never been a shareholder and then the burden of proof would be on you to say that actually you have.