Are you saying that I am to the Freetrade Forums what the ravens are to the Tower Of London? But more majestic and more regal obviously…
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Everytime Freetrade send a notification I keep hoping its my VWRL dividend, then I get disappointed 
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@acamp
Could you please give us a update as to whats happening with the late divdends.
I am currently waiting on VUSA, NVDA, TRIG and KO so far.
Its quite frustrating they we have you chase YOU for the money we are owed rather than just putting out a message to say what happening. While we just sit here and speculate, get irradiated and mad. It would also save your team answering the same question regarding the divdends from 1000s of people.
Just a thought.
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Morning @bhav
I know the team is working through some of these dividends on stocks with a significant number of holders. Typically around this time of the year we have higher than normal transfers activity. This creates issues with our reconciliations that need to be carefully checked before issuing payments - ie. as a chunk of payments need to be sent out/received from other providers.
I know the team processed some of the big ones on Friday and I’ll check but expect the others to be processed in the coming days.
Alex
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QUID is another late dividend, pay date was 28th June & we are now 8th July.
I do like Freetrade but they are weak with dividend info & some late dividend payments.
e.g. QYLP currently showing on my app as having 0.00% dividend which isn’t true, last month Freetrade showed it having just over 20% dividend which also wasn’t correct. (It’s normally around 10-11%)
Always make sure if buying a stock for its dividend that you check with various different sources what the real dividend rate/percentage is.
Having said all this, I’m still sticking with Freetrade as I am generally very positive about the platform
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Can nothing be done to streamline this?
transfer issues shouldnt delay payments for the entire user base imo.
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I’m terrified that the whole thing is running on a massive Excel spreadsheet with only one person, its creator, truly knowing how it works or where it pulls all of its data from.
I hope I’m very wrong! We’ve a new CEO these days, maybe this whole process in already on his radar.
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If they are using Microsoft products for records … well that would explain it as Microsoft products are not the best.
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QUID dividend now paid, so thanks for that.
Dividend info definitely needs tightened up for future
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Well maybe. I have noticed an increasing delay in dividend payments so this last time, when they were more than a week late, I followed up repeatedly and specifically asked when the dividend was received by Freetrade and when they started to receive interest from holding/investing it. It took some days but they finally admitted this had happened and they then issued me with a £2 refund.
So, I suspect dividend withholding is happening on a large scale and Freetrade is getting away with it because not many people can be bothered to send the repeated messages that were necessary to get them to admit to what happened. I would encourage everyone who has a delayed dividend payment to get in touch with Freetrade, demand answers and a refund of any interest that was made by Freetrade on the delayed payments.
Clearly Freetrade should either stop this practice entirely or be up front about what they are doing. Incidentally, after my complaint my next dividend payment arrived on time on the expected day…
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That is not true, they do earn interest on at least some delayed dividend payouts. They confirmed this to me today and provided a refund for interest on one delayed payment.
Hi @ASInvestor
Thanks for your feedback. I wanted to look into the conversation to understand what happened here.
In the case of the dividend that was delayed in payment to your account for six business days the reason was down to issues with reconciliations. We had customers transferring positions in the same share out to other providers, for whom we received dividends after they transferred (these are moved on to the new broker). This can cause a delay as we need to go through and verify that customers are being credited the correct amount. Normally this does not take six business days however the impacted ISINs included three of the largest and most widely held dividend payers - TRIG, VUSA and STHS - adding complexities here.
Your suggestion that this is happening on a large scale and in a deliberate way is simply not true, I’m afraid. The message you responded to explains the typical process and timelines. In the case of your dividend that was held for six business days it accrued 5p of interest. The total repayment you received in this case was not solely in acknowledgement of the interest income.
Any interest that may be earned while a dividend is sitting in an interest bearing client money account is very small.
Over 96% of dividend payments are completely automated and paid within 0 to 1 business days.
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OK, that sounds like a fair point. To give customers an idea of what is going on, or rather what is not going on, perhaps you could tell us the actual amount that was earned in the last 12 months by Freetrade from delayed dividend payments, and the amount that was paid out to the owners of those shares?
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And perhaps you could confirm if Freetrade has any plans to routinely and automatically reimburse customers for the earned/lost interest? As you say, in most cases like myself, its very small scale, but for some here it might be more significant.
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No apology then?
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They have already stated in this very topic that they don’t earn interest on the dividend account.
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Hi @ASInvestor
I can’t easily get that figure as the interest on delayed dividends isn’t split out from the interest on other cash held in the client money account. The amount is very very small though. You can do some hypothetical napkin maths to get a sense of this, assuming 96% of the total value of dividends is paid on time and an interest rate of c. 5% p.a. converted to daily interest.
I will of course pass along your feedback about crediting this interest to customers. As soon as the cash is allocated it will be factored into your monthly interest calculation. The difficulty will be to backdate this calculation on certain exceptions.
@Dave that’s not quite right. We receive dividends into a non-interest bearing account, but then the proceeds are converted to GBP (if needed) and moved to our client money account which is interest bearing. There’s a post earlier in this thread where I break this down (here: Freetrade dividend payments late always - #13).
this explains it from their perspective Freetrade dividend payments late always - #159 by acamp
I am receiving my dividends consistently on time BUT! now I am just receiving them without anything showing up in activity?
Yesterday 3i and warehouse paid before end of day so able to invest before the end of trade. But only because I checked account nothing showing in activity? Think they showed late Friday. No push thingy me jig to let me know.
Now all we have get sorted out is PIDs?
I would of thought a good estimate would be pretty straightforward. Surely, Freetrade must know the average amount of dividends paid out per day and the average delay in payment. So x * y = the monies withheld per day and if you multiply that by the interest rate you get the extra revenue Freetrade is making by withholding dividend payments. Of am I missing something?
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