I hold some Lloyds bank shares with a broker, and want to use my dividend to reinvest rather than take as cash – we aren’t talking big bucks by any means.

The broker does not offer a dividend reinvestment service, so I called the administrator Equiniti and tried to clarify (to a very confused woman in a foreign call centre) that I believe my only option is to transfer my shares to Equiniti who can then in turn offer the reinvestment service.

I think she finally understood what I wanted and said yes they can offer this if I transfer my shares, but looking at the reviews of Equiniti and my experience of the call centre staff, I can only see any transfer going wrong, are they the only company who can offer this reinvestment?

Thanks.

No, any decent share dealing service should be able to re-invest dividends.

I use i-Web for example

You should be able to transfer to a new service quite easily – see here

I use HL, not the cheapest but i really like the platform. And reinvesting dividends is what i do. Very easy to change to and set up.

If you transfer your holding to HL and it’s not large, check how much the platform fees will be. Like Mactheknife, I think they are worth it for ease of use, but I did some sums to figure out which of my investments were best off there.

Do Lloyds have their own divident reinvesting scheme? I have some Santander shares that I hold paper certificates for and Santander have quite a neat dividend reinvestment scheme themselves that I use.

Agree with mactheknife in that H&L has a great and very user friendly platform to buy & sell shares. Even the app is great.

I used to use Enquniti when i had Royal Mail shares but the website was abysmal to use and even trying to buy additional shares was a job in itself. Bestinvest are also very good and have cheaper charges than H&L.

I can’t believe any share trading platform doesn’t support dividend re-investment as a basic option!

Finbar – yes, Lloyds have their own DRIP; it’s a simple opt-in process. No broker required.

Thanks all for your help!

If you transfer your holding to HL and it’s not large, check how much the platform fees will be.

Outside of an ISA or SIPP, HL won’t charge for holding shares. They charge 1% for divi re-investment up to a max of £10.

I opted out of the auto reinvestment with equiniti as i wanted to build up a cash reserve and buy other stocks. It was auto for years, not complaining but some of the purchases were at high prices. Now i can just choose when to reinvest and in what.