“A shareholder has contacted us about a missing high-value share certificate (worth over £1m). In order to reissue the certificate, our share registrar has requested that the shareholder sign a letter of indemnity countersigned by a third-party insurer (or by some other financial institution prepared to act in an insurance capacity). We are struggling to identify for the shareholder an insurer who would be prepared to offer such an indemnity. Does anyone know of an insurer who offers this and the rates typically charged? If the shareholder cannot supply the appropriate indemnity, our share registrar has said that it will require an indemnity from us, in order for it to reissue the share certificate. If anyone else has had to do this, what steps did they follow? Are there any alternative options?”
Some registrars will will a countersignature service where the value of the shareholding is between £100 and £50,000 upon the payment of an insurance premium. A sliding scale of charges applies, depending on the value of the lost certificate to reflect the greater risk to the insurer.
If the value of the shareholding is greater than £50,000 the broker Robert Dowle Ltd of 1-3 Norton Folgate, Aldgate, London E1 6DB (tel 020 7426 5330) may provide a countersignature service for a fee.
We recently obtained a quote from Zurich for an indemnity counter signature for Group owned, unquoted shares worth £150,000. The premium quoted galvanised our search for the original! Apart from share registrars, who only tend to offer an indemnity service for smaller listed shareholdings, this doesn’t appear to be a common risk for insurers and attracts a fairly high premium. Banks no longer seem to offer the service (I only asked a couple). Happy to provide more details off line.
I have never had to deal with a lost certificate with a value over £1m but am currently dealing with one for an employee shareholder worth nearly £200k. I have only found one firm that has been able to help with lost large value certificates – Robert Dowle Ltd,1-3 Norton Folgate E1 6DB. They can help where the value is up to £100k. Above £100k they involve specialist underwriters. The premium to be charged if they agree to sign the Indemnity (£200k value) will be, I am led to believe, £2,500-3,000. We are taking steps to provide a nominee service for employee shareholders so they can hold share electronically but we don’t propose extending that to external shareholders. Until de-mat comes in lost certificates will remain a problem which it seems all shareholders think is the responsibility of the issuer to solve.
We have struggled with this issue.
Many of our shareholders are employees and after IPO for period of time we were prepared to provide the indemnity to the registrars, one of the reasons being that we knew the identity of the shareholder. We asked for certain confirmations from the shareholder before doing so.
We have stopped that practice and now leave it entirely to the shareholder to arrange an indemnity and insurance, the risk to the Company being quite high, especially if you don’t know the identity of the shareholder.
Hope this helps.
We had a similar problem last year. We were reluctant to provide a company indemnity, which would have required plc Board approval, as we did not want to appear to be treating this particular shareholder differently from others. We then found an insurance broker who was able to locate a third party insurer/counterparty to enter into the indemnity with the shareholder, details as below. I’m afraid I can’t recall the rate charged, but they were very professional and organised the indemnity pretty quickly:
Catherine Aleppo
Direct Tel: 01252 359086
catherine.aleppo@larkinsurance.co.uk
Lark Insurance Broking Group
Westmead House, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 7LP