I found some dividend warrants…but the date has passed!

Have you ever gone through your old clothes sorting them out to give them away only to find a tidy sum of money forgotten in the pockets? Or maybe not in the clothes, but in an old notebook you used to read. How did you feel?

You may have jumped up like the woman in the Gospel that found the drachma she was looking for.
Sometimes finding an unclaimed dividend warrant can be like that too. You suddenly realise that you are even richer than you thought. Many people today are like that. They struggle without knowing how rich they actually are.

Dividend warrants are like cheques. In fact, they are cheques. You know that there are two types of cheques. Since you started doing business you would have seen both of them – the open cheque and the crossed cheque.
 

The open cheque can be paid in cash but not so the closed cheque. The closed or crossed cheque can only be paid into a bank account usually a current account. Usually there can be a few exceptions to this rule.

This brings us to the relation between the dividend warrants and the cheques.
 
The dividend warrants are just like crossed cheques. They can only be paid into a current account or in some conditions to savings accounts. And this must be the account bearing the name of the payee whose name is on the warrant.

Since the life time of a crossed cheque is six months, the dividend warrant has to be presented for clearing within six months of the date written on it. This date is also known as the date of issue. After the written date it will no longer be honoured if presented to the bankers. Does that mean that your dividend is lost?

 No, it isn’t lost. All that is required of you to do is to take it to the Registrars. They will make sure you are the rightful owner and then they will revalidate it for you. That means that in the next six months, you can present your warrant to your bankers to clear it for you.

Then what is keeping you from smiling to the bank?

Armed with your revalidated dividend warrant, you are as rich as you can be. However, it would be good for you to set up a mandate so that you never have to make these time-consuming and costly trips to the Registrars and banks ever again.

To find out how you can do that, see how to  set up an e-dividend mandate on your account.