Certificated share dealing is one way of buying and selling shares.

When you invest in a company by buying shares, you may be issued with a formal certification of ownership. These certificates are essentially units of ownership in publicly listed companies.

Certificated share dealing is the process of buying and selling paper share certificates. When you buy shares in several companies, you build up an investment portfolio. If the value of the shares in your portfolio goes up, you will make money.

Before you can begin, you’ll need to open a share dealing account that lets you buy and sell certificated shares.

Once you’ve done this, you can either add money to your account and purchase paper shares or sell your share certificates online.

More people have moved towards digital share dealing as these shares are cheaper and faster to sell. This trend has seen the number of platforms available for buying and selling share certificates shrink.  However, many brokers and platforms will allow you to transfer your share certificates to a nominated account and trade that way.  

If you take this approach, the broker or platform will be listed on the shareholder’s register. As a result, you may lose some rights, such as voting in AGMs, and may no longer receive direct communications from the company concerned. The broker or platform will take on all the administration of your shares for you.

It's a good idea to take time to get used to trading stocks with a small investment to get a feel for how it works.”

How to find out what shares you already have

If you already have shares in a company or companies, you might be unsure what type you have. The good news is that there are only two types, and it should be quite simple to work out which ones you have. The two types are:

• Certificated: The shares are in your name, and you get a paper certificate as proof of the number of shares you own

• Electronically held: The shares are held electronically through the CREST system in the name of your broker, and you’re the beneficial owner

If you want to sell paper share certificates, you’ll need to use a share dealing broker, which will give you access to its trading platform.

There are several reasons you might want to sell share certificates. For example:

• You want to cash them in and realise their current value

• Paper share certificates are set to become a thing of the past

Our comparison shows brokers that can sell your share certificates. It can be expensive, so it’s always wise to shop around for the cheapest deal.

Most brokers charge you for every deal you make, but how much depends on the number you make each month. Some will offer discounts for regular traders.

For example, if you make up to nine deals per month you may get charged £11.95 per deal. But if you make 20 or more, the charge may reduce to £5.95 per deal.

Some brokers charge a flat-rate fee for certificated trades - such as £25 per sale - to cover the administrative costs of transferring your certified shares into another name. 

In recent years, certificated share dealing has become too expensive for many investors and many brokers and investment services no longer offer it as an option.

Dealing in any shares has risks. The value of your investments and the income you may receive can go down as well as up. This could be due to economic factors impacting the market as a whole or specific events at the company in which you own shares.

You could get back more or less than you invested. You’re not always guaranteed to make money.

The EU parliament introduced a process known as dematerialisation to put an end to paper share certificates in the EU. This law came fully into force in January 2025.

Although the UK government no longer had to stick to this timeline due to Brexit, in 2022 it created a digitalisation task force to address how existing paper shares can be converted into digital ones while preserving shareowner rights. The task force published its final recommendations and an implementation plan in July 2025. It proposed a staged approach.

The government has accepted the recommendations and will work to implement them over the course of the current parliament but there’s no definitive timeframe for when the process will be completed.

There are several companies that will allow you to transfer your certificated shares into a digital account. However, you’ll typically have to open a nominee account and may lose some of your previous rights when doing this. Follow these steps to convert your paper shares: 

• Find a company that will allow you to transfer your paper shares. There are plenty of options, including Barclays, Fidelity, and Hargreaves Lansdown

• Set up an investment or nominee account. Some providers let you manage your own investments, while others will charge to manage them for you, so make sure you know what you’re signing up for

• Check that the provider you’ve chosen will accept your shares. Some companies, such as Fidelity, will only accept transfers for shares they offer

• The transfer process varies depending on the provider. You may need to fill out a stock deposit instruction form as well as a CREST transfer form (you need a separate form for each company in which you hold share certificates). You’ll usually need to sign a CREST form by hand

• Send the completed forms and your share certificates by recorded delivery to your chosen firm

Certified share dealing jargon buster

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