Money has become essential for one to afford almost everything and basic needs needed for a comfortable life. Jobs requiring physical effort are the most common for many people although some do not necessarily require this. Stock certificates are a type of certificate that gives one the chance to be one of the shareholders of a company. By giving a chance to interested investors to have a fraction of the company, the company can get more funds to improve its service provision and expand. When one buys shares from the company, they are provided with stock certificates making them eligible for a share of profits made by the company in the future. This is a great opportunity to invest since the business may end up being very successful resulting to large amounts of profits for the shareholders.
After buying the shares, clients were usually given the stock certificate which was a document in paper form but uniquely designed. These documents contained personal information such as the name of holder, amount contributed and some identification number assigned at the time of buying. To prevent cases of forgery, the document included seals, watermarks and some signatures that were hard to replicate. When claiming dividends from the company one had to present these documents to verify their details to ensure they were actual shareholders. Time has changed and as such these certificates are being given in digital form rather than the previous hard copies.
In the digital certificates, a company keeps a record of transactions carried out for the certificate in computers. Companies were inconvenienced in the past by having to do many things like printing and physically checking the paper stock certificates. Although it has been digitized, some clients prefer the old means of hard copy certificates and they can be provided with them upon such requests. Shareholders are only allowed to use only one of the two forms but not both at the same time. To claim a paper stock form, one can use various channels such as going through a broker to arrange for it to be made.
Brokers are important in such deals as they act as links between clients and their respective companies and carry out tasks on behalf of the clients. Optionally, one can decide to get the certificate themselves from the company where no intermediary is involved. The another channel of acquiring the forms is by using transfer agents such as banks to be links between clients and the firms. Digital forms are easy to manage for both clients and the firms since one can get access from computing devices anytime from anywhere using the internet. Different brokers charge different amounts of fees for their services.
