I recently helped an elderly relative (90) do a change of address for her shares holdings. In February she move to a new home, and after 6 months after moving, the change of address for the shares still had not been done. My relative attempted to do the change by phone, but was constantly cutoff. So, I set up on-line access to the share holdings for her and did the change of address as she has no ability to do any online work herself.
One of the share holdings allowed me to do the change of address online - BUT a letter was sent to the old address as a confirmation!
The other share holding sent a letter to the old address with a code to allow the change of address to be completed!
My relative had a mail redirection so the letters were sent to the new address and everything was fine.
However, I find it ironic that to prove change of address requires mail to be sent to the old address! I suspect that these companies expect that the change of address is done before the move occurs, but this is not always possible.
I am sure there are other ways to prove change of address far better than sending a letter to the old address!
I understand when change of address is lodged for shares, correspondence is sent to the old address for security purposes. This is done as the old address has been accepted as the address of the holder, the new address could be anyone including criminals changing address as part of identity theft to sell shares.
A similar process is done when email address records are changed. Emails are sent to the old email address for the same reasons.
Some share registries are slowly changing their verification processes so that online logins have two factor authorisation and are using verified mobile numbers to send codes to allow personal details to be updated/modified. Even so, some still post changes to registered address for verification purposes. If one got mail advising of the change when a change wasnât requested, it allows the holder to contact the registry to advise that their login has been compromised (or someone other than the holder has requested the change). Correspondence often states what to do if the change was not made by the registered share holder.
Same thing happened to me. It was just fortunate that the new owners of my old address knew where i worked and dropped in my mail, otherwise Iâd never have received the relevant information. I had redirection for 1 year but as i was waiting for new address to be finished biulding the redirect expired. This is just so dumb, i asked to just email but no that isnât allowed. Policy needs to change as it can be a headache getting this changed
With shares you can ask for communications electronically. The only ones which are still posted, unless one nominates otherwise with the ASX, are CHESS certificates.
I suspect many share registries struggle with keeping up-to-date information on shareholders, as there are many who have had shares for many years and before the âdigital ageâ. As a result they seemed to be locked somewhat to the ways things were done in the past, where post verification was commonly used.
Hopefully if all shareholders create online portfolio accounts with the relevant share registry, they can start to move fully into the 21st centuary.
Email is (typically) hopelessly insecure. There is no way that anything involving financial assets should use email in isolation.
As @phb says, this is an anti-fraud measure. If the change of address is completely fraudulent then the letter will turn up to you at the old address and you will be quite surprised that someone is attempting to redirect your share correspondence. So you will contact the organisation and tell them that the change is fraudulent and they will put a stop to the change.
Honestly, I would rather a few wasted letters floating around Australia than my assets are siphoned off to Russia or North Korea by some hacker.
I have this issue with update Dividend Banking details for ironically, the NAB Shareholder Centre. For an (offshore) shareholder centre they cannot say if the leading zero in an account number is rejected (as the shareholder centre) whoever the service provider is cannot compute a leading zero!
In the end they assured me it was fine and sent the dividend payment to the previous (closed) account and it took me 9 months and go nowhere, so $3400 dividend is lost.
I have one account that starts with â001âŠâ and that is used for my username to login. Their system does not recognise me as â1âŠâ and require the â001âŠâ number. I suspect it has partly to do with validation since their account numbers all have the same numbers of digits, and without all the digits being entered is the missing one a leading zero or two, or unknown missing digits at the end.
Some of my accounts have a leading zero. When I enter it for EFT at other banks they strip that leading zero but all transfers have gone through, none have failed, even to the testy one above.
When in doubt it is always good to enter leading zeros and take a screen shot. If it works all is well no matter what they did behind the curtains. If the transfer goes missing one has evidence it is their responsibility for the compensation claim.
Did you go through the ombudsman (https://www.afca.org.au/) and how did that go?
Yes, but as âComputershare Investor Services Pty Limitedâ is not an AFCA member, despite being a financial service provider for NAB - ASX shareholders, AFCA cannot assist, and nor can NSW Fair Trading who advise they are offshore and they say they cannot get a response from them.
Pretty shabby for an Australian bank!
Interesting as the a/c I (tried to) redirect to is a NAB a/c with an NAB BSB etc.
I apologise since you probably have done âit allâ and had a run-around that seems worth filing a complaint with [our 3-ring circus of ânot my jurisdictionâ does not appear to have a ring for this one!].
But need to ask:
- Did you lodge one against or with NAB, noting the problem is with their registry company? Knocked you back?
- Contacted ASIC about Computershare Investor Services Pty Limited (ABN 48 078 279 277)? They were not interested?
- Lodged a complaint with VCAT or Consumer Affairs Victoria since the investor-centre is subject to Victoria laws per their own T&C?
- Asked for them to trace and reissue your dividend? I note their service for that appears to be in the British Virgin Islands!
This has been educational.
This isnât generally how it would have worked. If a dividend direct credit fails, which it would if an account was closed as transfers wonât succeed, a cheque would be issued to the holderâs address on the register. We know this as it happened to us a few years ago when shares when from DRP to payments, and the banking details recorded no longer existed. I also donât know what the process will be in the future when cheques are no longer used. I anticipate that a notice will be issued requesting deposit account details to be updated to allow payment to proceed.
If the address is a previous one where one lived, then the cheque could be anywhere. Usually cheques have a life thereafter they canât be cashed or what is termed as âgoes staleâ.
ComputerShare should know after this time that the cheque wasnât presented/cashed and should then be able to execute a new payment.
It was EFT and since NAB itself do not deal with its own shareholders you have to deal with Computershare in The Philippines by phone or email, which is where NSW Fair Trading gave up. Of course with missing EFT you have to raise through sender/their bank, unknown⊠I do not know if NCAT can help with a foreign company? I might try ASIC and just hope they not as belligerent as the ACCC.
EFT is direct creditâŠor payment of a dividend to a nominated bank account. ComputerShare will know the direct credit of dividends failed. NAB who held the closed account wonât.
ComputerShare is a listed Australian Company. In Australia it is the share registry for NAB shares. Listed businesses use share registries to administer issued shares.
ComputerShare should be able to sort if you contact them and have necessary records.
*Edit: If you check the payment advice for the particular dividend in question, it will give an indication of the payment instruction. Also check what the payment instruction was on the record date for the dividend - confirmation of payment instruction is issued by share registries. Also check the banking details on the payment instruction at that time were an account held by you (either the closed account or another account). If the details are wrong, then the monies could have been deposited in someone elses account. If you donât have a login to ComputerShare, create one and see if there are any outstanding payments for the shares. However, if you received further payments through updating your banking details, the outstanding dividend should have been cleared for payment. Also check bank statements to ensure the dividend hasnât been received at another time.
Computershare is the share registry for NAB shares along with many other companies.
NAB, like other big companies have many thousands of shareholders, and a lot of them are unit trusts and super funds.
So they have their share details managed by share registry companies.
For my share dividends, I get emails sent from the share registries to my nominated email address, advising of a dividend payment into my nominated account. Presumably a failed deposit into a nominated account would be advised and you would be asked what you want to do about that.
If your details are not up to date, then tell the registry company. I have a logon to each to manage that. Or contact them to ask about accessing your account. You will have an online account number even if you donât use it.
(my emphasis)
For many combinations of registrar and listed company, âthe future is nowâ i.e. cheque is simply not an option at all for dividend payment by a listed company (even though cheques do still exist more generally).
Hereâs just one listed company and registrar:
What will happen to my payment if I donât provide my banking details or the transfer is rejected or refunded by the bank?
Your payment will be held in a non-interest accruing account until you have provided Computershare with valid banking instructions - at which time the dividend will be credited to your account. It is important to note however that such payments will be made on a periodic basis and not on immediate receipt of your direct credit instructions.
(YMMV. This is just the first company that came up in a web search.)
I know from previous experience that this is a pain in the proverbial. (I had the situation of buying shares and then the company made a dividend payment almost immediately, before I managed to return the paperwork giving them bank details. It was then a drawn out process to get the dividend in my hot little hands. I suspect that the dividend is still taxable even when you donât have it yet in this scenario. 
)
When in doubt, the ATO says.
Your shareholder dividend statement or distribution statement should contain details of the date a payment was made to you, which is generally referred to on the statement as the payment date or date paid. It is this date that will determine in which income year you include the dividend in your assessable income.
Home page | Australian Taxation Office
Wisdom when in doubt is to seek professional or reliable advice. There are those with different views as to what is required. For the average consumer and tax payer with some shares on the side as noted. A very different scenario if a business or professional investor where there are other options.
The ATO makes it clear that dividends and distributions are taxable in the year they are paid or credited. That means if a share registry company cannot pay into a shareholder account for some reason, the dividend is still credited to be paid at some time the shareholder provides account advice.
All of my share dividends are paid to my accounts. None of my unit trust distributions are paid, but credited and used to buy new units. Still have to put those distributions into my tax return as dividends, imputation credits, cash earnings, capital gains or losses, and foreign earnings.
That is always solid advice but
we could be talking about a couple of hundred bucks here - so hard to justify getting professional advice unless you were heading to an accountant anyway for some other reason.
You will note that my advice fails âsafeâ. If you treat the income as taxable even though you havenât received it, the ATO is never going to complain. If it turns out that doing that was an error on your part then the error is in the ATOâs favour, and they are never going to complain about that.
For this actual scenario, there are a couple of unknowns for me:
- Does the paying institution notify the ATO of the income paid at the time that everyoneâs transaction is generated or does the paying institution only notify the ATO once the transaction is confirmed by the bank?
- If the transaction fails, how will you even know that there is income to declare?
For the first item, in my experience, once the ATO thinks that you have income (because they have been told by a payer), it is essentially impossible to persuade the ATO otherwise - even when the payer is wrong.
However the upside of this scenario is that if the payer doesnât have your bank details yet then the payer probably also doesnât have your TFN yet ⊠which should prevent the income being attributed to you as far as the ATO is concerned.
For the second item, I always reconcile but if I failed to receive both the payment and the paperwork then I doubt that I would notice.
Actually, that happened to me this year when the pre-filled bank details for interest was patently wrong. The ATO tax return software gave me warning messages when I deleted and re-edited the interest details from my own bank statements, and asked for a reason I was disputing their pre-filled data. Since there was no option of the data is bulls@#t, I settled for incorrect data. But nevertheless accepted my view without problems.
OK, I stand corrected. (I donât use the ATO software.) My encounter with this was of an accountant doing a tax return (not mine). Maybe the accountant was just too slack. 
Or maybe the software that the accountant is using has different behaviour. I might ask the taxpayer to push harder this year (since Iâm sure the data will be âbulls@#tâ again this year).
