IS THERE A LOGICAL BALANCE POINT BETWEEN SERVICE AND PRICE???

First--The Shape of the Stock Transfer Industry Today:

The U.S. stock transfer agent industry, in terms of size of agents, has evolved into a Hershey’s Kiss® shaped array. There are many (hundreds) of small transfer agents, often mom-and pop operations, with very little overhead. They may operate out of their homes, or carry little or no insurance, or have no employees, offer very limited service, or not be DTC eligible, etc. Because of these restrictions, some of them charge very little.

Then there are about ten mid-sized agents that offer full transfer agent services, and even fewer mid-sized agents, like StockTrans, that are technologically equal to any large transfer agent. (Forgive me for adding, in a pat to our own back, that StockTrans is one of the very few stock transfer companies of any size that also offers full stock benefit plan administration and self-administration software, both with broker-neutral online exercising capability for plan participants).

Then there are five or six mega-agents, with clients in excess of 500 all the way up to 3,000 or more. (In case you didn’t know, by the way, two of these mega-agents are actually owned by foreign companies).

Anyway, do you get the Hershey’s Kiss® picture? That is the shape of things in our industry.
So-- what do you get on the cost vs. service scale of this odd breakdown of stock transfer agents? Not always what you would expect! I promise I’ll tell you exactly what you should expect in my next post. And maybe even a recommendation of which transfer agent you should use…