I am dealing with my mother’s affairs after she died. She had shares in a company called Great-West Lifeco and I am not sure what to do with them. Ideally, I want to sell them and put the funds to her estate but can I do that when they are in her name? If not, what do I do?
I have also looked at what it might cost to sell these shares. They are worth about €5,000. The main Irish stockbrokers all seem to want you to open an account, which seems expensive and unnecessary when I do not have shares myself and only need it to sell these shares. What are my options?
Mr P.L.
Given the failure of Ireland’s dabbling in developing a share-owning citizenry – the debacle that was the Telecom Éireann/Eircom/Eir flotation – I’m always taken by surprise by just how many people over here actually do invest in shares.
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Most of those who invested in Telecom Éireann are still out of pocket all these years later and have sworn off any further dabbling in markets.
But there was always an older generation for whom share dealing had been a profitable venture – especially the many people who had invested in various mutual insurers down the years by virtue of the policies they held with them and who made good money when those companies ultimately listed on stock exchanges.
And I suspect that is what happened here. More than 50,000 Irish people benefited back when Canada Life went public in 1999 by virtue of having had with-profits policies with the life company.
When Great-West Lifeco bought Canada Life in 2003, these Canada Life shares were swapped for shares in its Canadian rival.
That was good news for the 25,000 or so Irish shareholders who had held on to their shares, like your mother. They had already jumped in value by 150 per cent in those four years and the average holding in Canada Life when Great-West Lifeco took over was worth €7,200.
Since then, the shares have risen by another 140 per cent so it was a canny investment decision by your mother to hold on to them.
Since then, Great-West Lifeco, which has its primary listing in Toronto, has acquired Irish Life, into which it merged its Canada Life business here.
Trading when someone is alive and the shares are in their own name is fairly straightforward but it can get a little more complex when, as you are, people are dealing with shares held by a dead relative.
There are two distinct steps you need to take here. First, you need to get these shares into the name of the executor to your mother’s estate, presumably you.
Once that is done, you can sell them.
Of course, if they were being left as a bequest to another person, you would only need to follow the first step and have the shares transferred into that person’s name, leaving them with any decision on selling them.
What can make all this a little more tricky is where the shares are of a company based in another country, as in your case. And in a world where companies are leaving the Dublin Stock Exchange for rivals, this is likely to become a bigger issue over time.
Put simply, you are far from alone in trying to deal with this sort of issue.
Changing the name
You might think that the first port of call in getting the name changed on a company’s shares is to contact the company itself, but no. Every company has what is called a share registrar, who, in simple terms, manages the share register, the list of people who have invested in a business and details of any changes in that ownership through share trading, placings, rights issues and/or consolidation.
They also keep tabs on what happens to individuals’ shareholdings when listed companies are sold.
Companies need to know who owns their shares or, more importantly, who is looking to trade in them – to be sure that the person purporting to own shares really is the owner. Traditionally, owners held paper share certificates as proof of ownership but these could get damaged or lost so, increasingly, share are now “dematerialised”, which means they are held in electronic form on a share register.
And if you have a paper certificate for these Great-West Lifeco shares, you will need to have it dematerialised before the shares are traded, that is converted into electronic format. That might have been done anyway but we can check.
In the case of Great-West Lifeco, the share registrar is a company called Computershare, one of the largest players in this business, which has offices here in Ireland and in many other jurisdictions, including in Canada.
The problem with all these companies is that they are quasi-legal entities, which means the forms they might need you to complete speak in very precise language that can be extraordinarily difficult for an ordinary person to understand.
Unusually, in this case, I am told you have two options, either of which will involve quite a bit of paperwork.
You can deal with Computershare in Canada. It has a section on its Canadian website on how to go about settling an estate where shares are involved.
First up, they will want a certified copy of the will. Do not be sending the original will anywhere. You will need that for probate in Ireland. You can get certified copies from the solicitor who held your mother’s will.
You or a fellow executor will then need to complete what is called a Declaration of Transmission, a form that must be witnessed by a notary and carrying their seal, which describes the shares, details of the owner, your mother, and details of the executors into whose names the shares should be transferred.
Shares cannot be transferred to the name of an estate. They will generally be transferred to the name of the executor, so “Mr P.L, executor of the estate of ...” in your case, with the P and the L written out obviously.
You may also be required to complete a letter of instruction which repeats a lot of what is in the previous form, notably the name(s), address(s) and PPS numbers of whomever the shares are being transferred to. If there is more than one executor, you will need those details for each one.
If you do have a paper share certificate, that will also need to be sent to Computershare. If the shares are held electronically, they’ll want details of the unique shareholder reference number.
Finally, they will need confidence that your signature is genuinely yours. This is provided by way of something called a medallion signature guarantee, which is both cumbersome and expensive here in Ireland.
There are a very limited number of companies here that offer this service. Stockbrokers Davy and Goodbody do offer the service but only for people who are clients. As I understand it, you’ve already looked at the costs involved in becoming a client of one or the other and have been put off by the fees involved.
While neither says why they restrict the service to clients, I assume it is because, having carried out the usual “know your client” checks required by Irish regulators, they can vouch for customers in confidence. Taking on people walking in off the street, like you, would involve carrying out a series of checks.
That aside, you can go through Finders International, IWC Probate Services, Lester Aldridge and Share Data.
Not all of them deal with all US registrars but I gather they do all deal with Computershare, which itself recommends IWC.
In terms of cost, that depends on the value of the shareholding and how much of the process you want IWC or whomever to do for you. The cheapest option will cost you £295 (about €340).
If you want them to take responsibility for checking your documents for any errors and for sending it back directly to Computershare in Canada (rather than just sending it back to you and leaving it to you to organise), that will be £399, or another €120 euro roughly. They offer even more comprehensive services which can cost up to £1,495.
And that does not include legal fees. They will require you to get a solicitor over here to witness and certify your identity and signature, which you will also have to pay for.
As you can see, that’s a lot of paperwork, hassle and expense. But you do have a second option.
Computershare tells me that, at least for Great-West Lifeco shares, shareholders domiciled in Ireland, which would presumably have included your mother and, indeed, you, can use Computershare UK’s intermediary service.
You will need to wait until you have probate and them send a certified copy of that, which will cost you €20 to get. It should be sent to: Computershare Investor Services plc, The Pavilions, Bridgwater Road, Bristol, BS99 6ZZ, United Kingdom.
I have no doubt additional paperwork will be involved but that was as much as was available in the time to hand. Computershare does have a bereavement pack that you can get either by calling +44 370 7020000 or by emailing WebCorres@Computershare.co.uk, which will presumably have more comprehensive details.
The big plus, I suspect, of going via the UK is that you avoid the medallion guarantee rigmarole. If emailing, make sure you let them know that you are dealing in Great-West Lifeco shares.
Selling the shares
Once you have got through that process, and have the shares in your name as executor, you can then proceed to sell them.
Your options here are much wider than they used to be. Traditionally, you would have been forced to go through one or other of the established stockbrokers – Davy, Goodbody or Cantor Fitzgerald.
But, as you have already found out, they all tend to want you to sign up to an annual service, with attendant fees. That’s an option if you are trading more generally but not much use for someone in your position who is interested only in a one-off trade.
They used to be more flexible, offering one-off execution-only services. I’m not sure if that has changed because of regulatory pressure or to differentiate themselves from the flood of new online stockbroking services now available. I suspect the latter.
Anyway, for someone in your position, it makes more sense to take a look at some of the newer online-only services. They include eToro, DeGiro, Trade Republic, Trading212, Interactive Brokers and Lightyear.
Not all might be prepared to deal with Canadian shares so you will need to check and also compare pricing and the services offered. In all case, the shares will need to be dematerialised – that is, held in electronic form, not a paper share certificate.
All appear to offer the chance for a straightforward sale at a fraction of the price you are looking at from the traditional brokers. And most of them are now well established in the Irish market, so there should be no real concerns on that point.
There are several private sites that offer to compare the services offered but you might be best to start with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), which is, after all, the consumer watchdog.
It has a website on general advice for investing and then another about different investment platforms available in Ireland.
As you can see, it will take a bit of work before you get your mother’s Great-West Lifeco shares off your hands. It certainly seems worthwhile getting in touch with Computershare in the UK initially to confirm exactly what they require to get the name of the shares changed, and then look at one or other of the online brokers to actually sell them.
Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com, with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice.
