New year, new broker!

Well my broker changed this weekend, with Selftrade being swallowed up by Equiniti.
I've run with it for the moment for the sake of continuity and convenience, but it will also give me a chance to look at their systems and client support.
It took a little time to find that they were created out of Lloyds back in 2007, hence the strong Company Registrar side of their services.

It also reminds that, at the time I first moved my dealing to Commerzbank (now Selftrade after various takeovers), they were in fact a joint venture with Lloyds being one of the partners, things running full circle it seems.

I also think I would have traded something with Equiniti before, in order to tidy up a relative's holdings, probably Friends Provident, which also looks to be coming back to my portfolio with the buy out of Friends Life, by Aviva.

I seem to remember the screen colours being green or blue rather than the unfortunate red that emblazons the screen now.

I do suspect that I will look to change at some stage this year though, which I dislike doing given the lead time, the potential costs, and the potential for other disruptions.

That being said, my last couple of years with Selftrade weren't happy ones, with an increasing number of non-customer friendly actions and numerous threats to freeze accounts.
This included one occasion after I deleted "old" dd permissions on my bank account, for a previous incarnation, Commerzbank (a previous owner), and an earlier now closed trading account, but retained the permissions for the current Selftrade incarnation.
This unfortunately triggered Selftrade to issue various threats and requirements for me to go through security and send in personal documents all over again.
It seemed incomprehensible to the so called smart alec's on customer services, that the dd was year's old and out of date, to a now closed account, and not even to the same named company as it was now.
The one link between old and new being my personal reference details.

They probably hadn't even been with the organisation through those changes and continued with a series of threats to freeze my assets if I didn't comply and conform to their security processes "again", this despite confirmation from my bank that the current DD's were in place.

So, I think it a failing, after complex history of changes, buy out's, and name changes, that there was no facility to clean up personal, but out of date information. 
Particularly when customer services lacked the education of their own company's history to manage that information and provide a "customer service".

Once resolved, I also got no apology (which also seems all to common these days), only a terse email response that following review my details were in fact in order and unaffected by my actions.

Its always an eye opener to find out how rude, aggressive, and non-customer friendly, customer services actually is, and this seemed to increase under the most recent Selftrade version of the company.

The chopping and changing of charges, becoming a bank, dissolving the bank, and the messy new multiple screens and log on's also didn't help my deteriorating impression of Selftrade.

So apart from the traffic light red headings what does Equiniti look like?
Well its early days still (my first day in fact), but having all my holdings on one screen is actually an improvement, and the lack of scrolling windows and pages, embedded in a larger screen window (as per Selftrade), is much cleaner. As is the one screen session to log in, navigate and open.

My permissions are noted, namely the W-8BEN form, and a clear expiry date, and my warrants permissions have expired it seems.
This also reminds me that, despite it being their prescribed process to do so, Selftrade failed to inform me when my W-8BEN required renewal (I think its every 2/3 years), which resulted in yet another conflict with Customer Services. They also did not record the expiry date in your account details so, if you hadn't made note, instead trusting their process, you could easily fall foul as I did.
I eventually got some help from someone who had in fact been with the company right back to its buy out of Skipton Dealwise, a broker set up originally under Skipton BS.

So I'm easing my way into Equiniti, the transfer has been undertaken in the time communicated and there are some positives in the screen presentation.
I may not be convinced just yet, but its a reasonable first impression.

Fingers crossed.