This is an observation, I don't know if anyone else has come up against this problem/ inconvenience when buying or selling shares in Australia for investing or trading.
I have three commsec trading accounts including our SMSF who hold my shares under 'CHESS' and in the U.K. I have accounts using the 'Trading platforms 'Hargreaves Lansdown ' and 'A J Bell'.
Buying /Selling shares, funds etc in the U.K. even from Australia is incredibly easy as the 'Platforms' themselves hold all your information and requirements, i.e. address, bank account details, tax information if required, contact preferences etc, via a 'nominee company' which I believe performs the same duties as the Australian Registrars. Any trades I make on my UK platforms are simply recorded, and absolutely no follow up action by myself is required.
Yet each trade made in in Australia is followed by a paper trail from the company involved advising me of the relevant registrar (Computershare, Link, or Boardroom normally) All of these 'Registrars I add are normally very difficult to deal with and any telephone contacts often end up in an o'seas call centre.
Despite the fact that all my details are lodged with these registrars I still have to either on line or by mail lodge my details again for each and every purchase, and should I forget any dividends paid will have chunky ' withholding tax' applied because they didn't have my TFN. Then follows by mail the CHESS statements generated by the ASX.
As I travel around a lot I find the whole system both inconvenient, inefficient, and costly. Australians just seem to love red tape and excessive bureaucracy!
