Stocks and shares

A 'share' is a single unit of ownership in a company. 'Stock' represents part-ownership in one or more companies.

Stocks and shares are bought and sold on stock markets around the world by:

• stockbrokers
• investment and fund managers, and
• other share-dealing businesses.

If you want to buy or sell stocks and shares, you need to use a share-dealing business or stock business.

Most shares are held electronically, usually in the name of the share-dealing business, which means the shares are recorded in the share-dealing company’s name.

We can help you if a share-dealing business has:

• delayed setting up and running a share dealing account, or transferring your account, that stopped you getting the price you wanted
• made mistakes with a transaction that you feel stopped you getting the best available price
• didn’t inform you about a corporate action – such as a takeover, share issue, general meeting or rights issue – that affected your interests as a share holder
• lost a share certificate, for example, by sending it to the wrong address
• is charging you unfairly, for example by introducing new charges that aren’t in line with your contract

If your complaint is about stocks and shares that you hold in an ISA, see our page for consumers about ISAs.

Our service is free and easy to use. 

1. Before bringing your complaint to us, you should make a formal complaint to the company involved.
2. If they don't send you a final response letter within eight weeks – or you're unhappy with their response – you can complain to an ombudsman.
3. Our complaint checker will tell you more about some of the things we need to know upfront to help you get ready to send us your complaint.
4. Fill in our online complaint form. Your case will be assigned to a case handler who will get in touch when they start to investigate.
5. To help us consider a complaint fairly, we may ask you to provide more information to help us understand what happened.

Use our complaint checker

We’ll make our decision about what happened using evidence from you, the financial business and any relevant third parties – such as the registrar or, in complaints about transfers, the other firm. To reach a decision, we'll also consider:  

• the relevant law 
• any regulations that applied at the time 
• any industry codes of conduct in force at the time
• contracts between you and the share-dealing business and other evidence 
• terms and conditions, for example, about providing trading systems
• why a transaction went wrong
• how long things took, for example by looking at market data
• how clear communication was

We'll tell you whether we believe you've been treated unfairly or not and explain how we reached our decision. 

If we think you've lost money because the firm did something wrong, we'll tell the financial adviser or firm to put things right.

We may also tell them to pay you compensation for any distress or inconvenience you have suffered.

What to expect

More about capital protected structured investments and other high-risk investments on the MoneyHelper website