How to value shares for Confirmation

When you’re valuing an estate for Confirmation, you need to know the value of an asset on the day the person died (‘date of death’). This is more complicated to work out if the estate includes shares.

This post takes you through this process, step by step.

Type the name of the company into Google with the words ‘share price’ after it. This should bring up its share profile, where you can find their legal name.

The legal name for BT in share listings is ‘BT Group’, as shown in this screenshot.

Type the name into the search box of the Yahoo Finance website and select the correct option.

On the right hand side of the screenshot below it says ‘LSE’ – this is the ‘London Stock Exchange’. Some companies are listed on multiple stock exchanges, so it’s important to get the right one.

The share certificates should say which stock exchange to use. Alternatively, contact the company that manages the registration of the company’s shares. There are 3 main companies that do this: Equiniti, Computershare, and Link Asset Services.

Select the right company in the search results. You’ll be taken to the company’s share price page.

Then select ‘Historical data’. You might have to scroll down to see this. This screenshot shows it as a horizontal tab, but it might be on the side.

Under the ‘Historical data’ tab, use the date selector to select a time period with:

Make sure you have the correct year. It will usually be set a year earlier by default.

Once you’ve entered the correct dates, select the ‘apply’ button.

To calculate the share price to use in your inventory, you need to work out what’s known as the ‘quarter-up’ price.

The quarter-up price is the lowest price in the selected time period, plus one quarter of the difference between the higher and lower prices.

In our example, the ‘low price’ in the date period is 184.35. The ‘high price’ is 188.85.

These values are all given in pence.

There are three steps involved in calculating the quarter-up price for this example.

You should then round your result to the nearest 2 decimal places.

So our final result here is 185.48 pence.

To calculate the value of the shares, multiply the number of shares by the price you just calculated.

In this example, we have 500 shares with a quarter-up price of 185.48.

We then divide this by 100 to convert it from pence to pounds.

This is the figure you should enter on your C1 form to apply for Confirmation.

When entering shareholdings into the inventory page of your C1, it’s best to list them under the company that manages the registration of the shares, rather than the company the shares were held with. This registration company is who you’ll need to show the Confirmation document to.

There are 3 main companies that do this:

​