A FTSE SMALL CAP Company Secretary & General Counsel writes...

Our registrar has come to us with a “Dematerialisation Readiness Strategy”.  They want us to sign an addendum to the registrar agreement and pay a fixed fee of £5,000 plus VAT for a data cleanse, tracing and a shareholder engagement/education mailing ahead of the move to digital registers.  We only have around 75 certificated holders, so £5k feels steep for the numbers involved.  There also seems to be quite a rush on it and they want to do the work straight away even though I’m not aware of any regulatory reason why it’s urgent.  I can’t help feeling that someone within the registrar saw dollar signs but perhaps I’m being cynical…

I wanted to sanity check whether you’re doing something similar and whether you thought this work was necessary/reasonable?  Thoughts please.