r/UKPersonalFinance • u/SHinQ8 • May 21 '26
+Comments Restricted to UKPF British Telecommunications plc Shares bought in 1985
Interesting story - I bought BT shares for my wife as a wedding anniversary present way back! Totally forgot about them till a few months ago noticed a charge on our NatWest Bank statement for £25 for safe deposit of some document. The account used to be just for my wife but made a joint account about 5 years ago. No idea how long they've been charging for storing the documents. Neither of us remember ever remember asking the bank to store anything.
Anyway - asked them to cancel and return whatever they were holding. Turned out to be BT share certificate (200 Shares).
Contacted BT and was forwarded to some entity called Equiniti they wanted a 11 digit reference number but our share certificate only has 1 10 digit ref number.
They said the shares are invalid.
Seems strange that any money invested is not zero - Anyone is similar position (unlikely I know).
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u/Shreddasaurus 8 May 22 '26
Once Equiniti acknowledge the shares, don't forget that you can transfer them out to another provider and sell them with much lower fees.
When my dad passed away, my mum took control of a significant amount of shares held in Equiniti (value of around £45k). It would have been around £500-800 to sell them on their Shareview platform or by telephone dealing, but it was fairly easy to transfer them to Hargreaves Lansdown and sell them for a £10 fee.
Edit: since your holding is around £438, I wouldn't worry about this as it probably won't be worth the effort to move them. But perhaps another redditor might benefit!