Frequently asked questions

If you need to know the balance of the shareholding, please contact us on 0800 181 4702.

If you have lost or destroyed your share certificate or if it has been stolen you will need a replacement. We will place a restriction onto the certificate to stop it from being used fraudulently. 

Administration

A fee is charged to cover the costs in producing a replacement certificate. 

Countersignature

The indemnity form must be countersigned by a suitably authorised bank, insurance company or guarantee society.

Two alternative providers of insurance cover that offer a chargeable counter signature service are Portsoken Ltd who can be contacted by telephone on 020 3994 4983, website www.portsoken.co.uk or email lostshares@portsoken.co.uk and Trust & Probate Insurance who can be contacted by telephone 020 7397 4366, website www.trustprobate-insurance.co.uk or email enquiries@trustprobate-insurance.co.uk

Other companies do exist and this information does not constitute advice or a recommendation, and you must ensure that you identify the most appropriate solution. Link Market Services Trustees Limited are not in partnership with either company, no commercial benefit arrangement exists and there is no sharing of information with either company.

 This is to take on any possible liability of the certificate being used fraudulently.

 We can provide cover for ourselves to support the indemnity and the standard fees, inclusive of VAT are shown below:

If the value of the missing certificate is over £100,000 we will not be able to provide cover and we will set out the options available to you in our covering letter.

These are the ways in which you can replace the missing certificate. For security reasons, we cannot accept your request by email

Phone

Value less than £10,000

If the value of the missing certificate is under £10,000 you can use the Telephone service to obtain a replacement. To use this service the shares must be held in your name and not jointly with anyone else and you must have access to receive emails so we can send you a summary of the indemnity terms and conditions. If a fee is applicable then you will need access to a debit card (credit cards not accepted) to cover the fee.

Call our Helpline on 0371 664 0300 and pick the option to report your certificate missing.

To locate and help you, our Customer Service team will need to complete a security check – have your personal details ready.

Calls are charged at the standard geographic rate and will vary by provider. Calls outside the United Kingdom will be charged at the applicable international rate. 

We are open Monday – Friday, 8:30am – 17:30pm excluding bank holidays in England and Wales.

Once the relevant anti-fraud checks have been completed the certificate will be sent to you within 5 days.

Value more than £10,000 or if the shares are held jointly

If the value is over £10,000 we will send you a document known as a letter of indemnity. A letter of indemnity protects the company and us against the risk of financial loss if the original is used fraudulently. 

Call our Helpline on 0371 664 0300 and pick the option to report your certificate missing.

To locate and help you, our Customer Service team will need to complete a security check – have your personal details ready.

Calls are charged at the standard geographic rate and will vary by provider. Calls outside the United Kingdom will be charged at the applicable international rate. 

We are open Monday – Friday, 8:30am – 17:30pm excluding bank holidays in England and Wales.

The letter of indemnity will be sent to you within 5 days and once you return this and the relevant security checks have been processed we will send out the replacement certificate within 10 days.

Post

Write to us at the address below:

Link Group,
Central Square,
29 Wellington Street,
Leeds
LS1 4DL

Make sure that your letter includes:

• The name of the company(ies) that you hold shares in
• The name of the shareholder
• The signature of the shareholder or legal representative
• Detail the share certificates you are in possession of (if any)
• If the certificates have been stolen, the crime reference number

If you have a payment that needs to be reissued we can do this for you. We may charge a fee for this service to go towards the administration costs involved and security checks that must be performed. 

Our standard fees are listed below:

For security reasons, we cannot accept your request by email or through the 'contact us' form.

Phone

If you are the named shareholder or their legal representative we will be able to reissue any outstanding payments over the telephone.

Any applicable fees can be made using a debit card (credit cards are not accepted). Please call the Helpline on 0371 664 0300 and select the dividend payments option.

To locate and help you, our Customer Service team will need to complete a security check – have your personal details ready.

Calls are charged at the standard geographic rate and will vary by provider. Calls outside the United Kingdom will be charged at the applicable international rate. 

We are open Monday – Friday, 8:30am – 17:30pm excluding bank holidays in England and Wales.

Post

Write to us at the address below:

Link Group,
Central Square,
29 Wellington Street,
Leeds
LS1 4DL

Make sure that your letter includes:

• The name of the company(ies) that you hold shares in
• The name of the shareholder
• The signature of the shareholder or legal representative
• Request the payments that you need reissued

Please enclose any out of date cheques that you have and a cheque to cover the fee (made payable to Link Market Services Limited). The replacement will be processed and sent to you within 21 days. 

Next steps

You can set up a bank account (known as a dividend mandate) on your holding so that dividends are paid to you directly and available on the payment date. For more information go to the Dividends section in our Help centre. 

If the shareholder’s name appears differently on the legal document from the share certificate, for example if one includes middle names, please confirm to us by letter that both versions of the name relate to the same person.

Or, if there was a name change for the shareholder, and we have the previous name on the share certificate, please send us the official document confirming the name change, such as a marriage certificate or deed poll.

Your stockbroker, bank or financial adviser will be able to give you this information. You can also find share prices in daily newspapers with a financial section, or from various sites on the internet, like the London Stock Exchange www.londonstockexchange.com. As share registrar, we’re unable to give share valuations.

No, once we have seen your document(s) and you have been registered as a personal representative, you will be able to sell the shares. Sale proceeds will be made by cheque to the personal representative(s) and sent to the address we have registered for the shareholding. If you need the proceeds of the sale to be made payable in another name, we will need a letter signed by all of the personal representatives to authorise this. There may be a fee for this service.

We ask for a fee to cover some of the work which may involve placing a stop on the original cheque, updating our payment records and issuing a new cheque. It’s a more lengthy and complicated process than issuing the original cheques to all shareholders at dividend time.

If you send us a list of the companies you think may be involved, we can check those registers for you.

You will need to obtain a grant of representation. This appoints between one and four personal representatives who are called ‘executors’ or ‘administrators’.

The common types of grant of representation are:

• Grant of ‘probate’ (if there is a will)
• ‘Letters of administration’ (if there is no will)
• Certificate of confirmation (Scotland)

The grant acts as proof that the personal representative(s) can deal with the estate and sign documents. If you choose to get a grant of representation from the probate registry, please send it to us so that we can update the share register.

You may want to get some sealed copies of the grant of representation from the probate registry if you’ll be dealing with several different organisations who all need to see the legal document.

We can accept an original or a sealed copy. Please note, the grant must be issued before the personal representative(s) can do things such as cash assets or sell any property.

If you require any additional support relating to estate management or guidance around obtaining a grant of representation our partners at Co-op Legal Services are available to assist. You can obtain further information by clicking here.

Alternatively if you would prefer for Co-op Legal Services to contact you directly to discuss your needs further please click here.

Some estates can be small so as an alternative to obtaining a grant of representation you can use our Small Estates service.

The service can be used when the total value of all UK shares is less than £20,000. We will send you a Small Estates indemnity form to fill in. The indemnity is a declaration that the person(s) signing the form are entitled to deal with the estate.

The service cannot be used if a UK grant of representation has already been issued.

There are two fees for using the Small Estates service – an administration and a countersignature fee.  

Where required the indemnity form must be countersigned by a suitably authorised bank, insurance company or guarantee society. This is to take on any possible liability where the register of shareholders is being updated without sight of a grant of representation.

We can provide cover for ourselves to support the indemnity