Most inexpensive ways to cash in shares?

[WomensLandArmy]

Good morning. I know nothing about investments, my experience is strictly confined to Cash ISAs and some Premium Bonds. My husband's father passed away last year and part of the inheritance is c £40k in shares (to be split between the beneficiaries). My husband is one of the executors. My question please, is what is the best way to cash in the shares? We have found a company online but they charge a rather hefty fee. Can anyone recommend the least expensive way to sell them. Thank you.

Speak to the individual companies first. Some of them may have zero/ low changes for handling the transaction for probate sales.

changes= charges

Thank you, a good tip. Some of the beneficiaries are young adults who will find this money so helpful so we really want to realise as much cash for them as possible.

Would another option would be to transfer the shares to them? May be better to hang on to them unless they need the cash now.

Money most definitely needed now, but thank you for your thoughts.

Not a finance professional, so no idea here, but can they open s&s ISAs with an online broker eg AJBell and just transfer the shares in there, then sell them? You probably need to check that the broker hosts those shares. If it's tricky I found Hargreaves Lansdowne hosted some shares I couldn't hold with AJBell.

I've no idea if "hold" is the correct term here, but you can see what I mean. HL is pretty helpful on the phone if you need it. I've never had cause to phone AJBell, but they were pretty good by email when I transferred stuff to them.

Not a finance professional, so no idea here, but can they open s&s ISAs with an online broker eg AJBell and just transfer the shares in there, then sell them?

No. I'm not a finance professional either, but I know you can only transfer shares into an ISA in very limited circumstances (within 90 days of receiving them from a an SAYE scheme). In other cases you need to sell the shares and transfer the money in as cash, which defeats the objectbin this case.

Are all the shares from one company, so they can be sold in one transaction? Hargreaves Lansdown charges £11.95 per transaction for the first 9 transactions, and less after that: www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/fund-and-share-account/charges-and-interest-rates

p.s. This is how you would transfer them in: www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/transferring-your-existing-investments

@treblegold they are from a few different companies. Googling has suggested a company called x-o to sell shares, who charge around £6 for a transaction. I'm passing on al the suggestions and will let DH and the other executors deal with it!

I'm no financial professional either @WomensLandArmy but have recently been in the sad position of having to sell shares belonging to my late husband.

I had sold some shares of my own a few weeks before he died, and paid the sum of £25 for the service with an on line company.
Simple and straightforward.
Sadly, they don't deal with sale of deceased shareholder's shares so I went direct to the administrators of the shares (just Google who administers x company's shares and it should pop up).

I found that it wasn't as simple as selling your own shares - nowhere near as simple.

The shareholder's death had to be formally registered in the first instance and in order to do this, they wanted to see the Grant of Probate document - possibly other paperwork too but I can't remember exactly (I've sent a LOT of paperwork to a lot of people recently!).
Once that was done, and I had been notified of the formal registration , then a form was submitted to sell the shares.
There were a lot of instructions regarding the way the process had to be completed and I was advised that not following it would incur extra costs to me eg. I couldn't send the Grant of Probate and the instructions for sale all at once otherwise I'd be charged £60 admin costs over and above the fees for handling the sale.

I was charged £70 in total for the sale of the shares - and the value of them was nowhere near your 40K value.

If there are paper share certificates involved, I would strongly advise you get copies or photographs of these before you send them anywhere to sell, as I was also charged a £60 "lost certificate fee" but was able to challenge this as I had photographs of them and could give the company all the details regarding certificate numbers etc etc.
I'm currently awaiting reimbursement of that fee.

Good luck with it all.
It's not simple but is doable providing you read the small print.

Thank you so much and I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your husband. Yes yes to the amount of paperwork. Thank you.

I was also going to add that selling shares was the biggest pita relating to late DF's estate. This is due to the draconian and Kaftaesque way that this has to be done to prevent fraud. For instance all 3 executors had to sign paperwork and I made a mistake on the actual paperwork which couldn't be downloaded and had to be posted. There were LONG delays. Also you'll need a valuation at time of death vs sale for probate purposes so I'd suggest you do it quickly. I spent more time sorting £70 of shares than selling a house! One reason for this was to not completely lose money (and the plot) was for me to buy the shares from the estate and have them transferred to me and then I gifted them to my son. You could also give to charity. My DH inherited shares from his DF and he never manages to sell at the right time and has to work out gains for tax purposes!