Are you a Phuthuma Nathi shareholder with unclaimed dividends?

A pot of money — R207m to be exact — is waiting to be claimed.

Phuthuma Nathi, the MultiChoice broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) share scheme, is looking for 22,000 shareholders who haven’t received dividends between 2006 and 2020.

As one of the most successful schemes in SA, with more than 80,000 black shareholders, Phuthuma Nathi has been paying dividends every year since the start of the scheme in 2006. A dividend is when a company decides to distribute a portion of its profits to shareholders as declared by the board of a company.

“Generally speaking, the company will declare an amount per share to be paid to shareholders on a specific date. For instance, if the company declares 50c a share to be paid to shareholders, a shareholder holding 100 shares will receive R50 in dividends,” says Phuthuma Nathi chair Mandla Langa.

“Phuthuma Nathi conducts outbound campaigns and uses tracing agents to find shareholders who have not claimed their dividends. Though some of the shareholders have been found, there is still a large number who have not claimed their dividends.” 

Langa says shareholders’ dividends are automatically paid into the bank accounts on Phuthuma Nathi’s records. However, reasons why some shareholders don’t receive their money include invalid, incorrect or incomplete banking details; suspended shareholder accounts due to suspected fraud or account verification failure; the death of a shareholder; or a company submitting an expired BBBEE certificate.

Phuthuma Nathi’s campaign aims to create awareness and alert people that they might have some much-needed cash owing to them. This would be a welcome relief in a tough economic environment where many people have lost their income due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This money belongs to our shareholders. We’re calling on them to contact us to get their money. In these tough economic times, we want to do everything in our power to give them what is rightfully theirs,” says Langa.

“Shareholders have used their dividends on various things based on their personal circumstances, such as paying for their children’s tertiary education; investing for retirement; buying education policies; buying or renovating their houses; or going on holidays.”

The scheme is doing its best to find the shareholders who haven’t who received their dividends through a nationwide awareness campaign that includes social media, radio, print and online news, running until the end of March 2021.

To find out if you or anyone you know has unclaimed dividends, contact Phuthuma Nathi, where you will be asked to provide the shareholder ID number. Additional information will be required to verify the legitimacy of the shareholder.

Payment will be made once the verification process has been concluded. If a shareholder has died, the family should contact the call centre, where they will be asked to provide information to assist with the transfer of the shares or for the shares to be sold and payment be made to the family.

The public can e-mail phuthumanathi@singular.co.za or call 086-011-6226. For more information visit the Phuthuma Nathi website.

This article was paid for by Phuthuma Nathi.