I was very naĆÆve in thinking that companies paid out dividends the same day and that itās the investment platform being slow. Thanks for clearing this up @Dave & @weenie
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The issue is there can sometimes be a long delay between the dividend showing in your acount balance and actually recieving the notification (email/app notifcation/activity feed). I believe this is what the OP is mainly referring to. Iāve had it a few times where the notification finally comes in 8+ hrs later around 2-3am. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but I have spent my dividends a few times not realising they were actually paid.
Would be good if this random lag was fixed
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To be honest Iām just guessing, but I canāt image them moving that much money to that many shareholders all at once
I see the issue here. Iāve had this happen though the delay usually isnāt significant.
But as thereās not clear running balance of transactions itās sometimes not clear if your balance reflects reality. As the balance will sometimes update before the transaction statement is updated.
Iāve had this today where Iāve received a small dividend and for a few hours Iāve basically had non existent money in my account assuming you use the exported activity as the source of truth.
Some sort of pending line or anything just to indicate money has been added would be a nice addition, if for nothing else than to know your account is pending reconciliation
Today recieved uk divident and corp bond yesterday ftse 100
Could you imagine if the dividend payments were all setup to be paid automatically using a computer system that a multi-billion pound company has invested in? I would assume in this day and age the payments would happen in seconds, lasting no more than a few hours for all to complete. There is no need for them to be days lateā¦
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FT takes sweet sweet time to distribute dividends, but if anyone using vanguard platform at the same time, itās in a whole different level. At this point my dividends on that platform will be received in the next tax year.
Vanguard paying dividends on their own Vanguard products canāt really be anything but speedy/on time! 
I can assure you they are neither 
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One would imagine they (Shell) jave time to generate a CSV of payments to be made on the Ex Div day, or the day after. Computers and databases, midern inventions, can help with this greatly.
Once submitted to the payment system with the payment date specified, its just ātimeā
On Ex Div date +1, Shell could notify all jolders/Nominees of there anticipated receipts. Again, computers might be able to help here.
Finally, Freetrade know who holds Shell at 1 minute after market close on Ex Div date. Using a, guess what, computer, they could generate an export of all Shell holders and have a ābatchā ready of anticipated receipts to reconsile with the inbound information from their middleman and statement/confirmation of reveipt from the bank.
One all this data is reconciled, with any edits, the batch prepared on Ex Div day + 1 could be posted to ledgers/Activity feeds.
Multiply this by the number of instruments processed and, yes, a lit of data and transactions and reconciliations but ultimately much of it should be automated and human intervention only requured upon exception (unless FSA has human intervention requirements).
One wonders whether development effort was expended in new geographies or optimising back office process, both could contribute to FreeTrade bottom line in different ways.
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We need a bank statement stlye activuty feed. That way, each transaction would also affect the balance at the same time (also in the monthly PDF statements).
Opening Balance/movement in month (maybe separate buys/sells)/closing balance.
Splits/reverse splits confuse this simplicity so perhaps a separate column for the splits.
Just ācurrent positionā without āin monthā transactions feels that it is falling short of the exoected norm for a āstatementā
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Iāve no doubt itās all automated, but that doesnāt necessarily mean it happens all at once. They have millions of bank transfer to banks all over the world.
I donāt claim to know how itās done. But I would expect it to be a batched process
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