Investments made through Pearler are CHESS-sponsored, which means ownership of your shares is directly assigned to you.

Direct ownership means that you have a direct relationship with each company and ETF, which is why you receive paperwork from companies that aren't Pearler.

To facilitate the transfer of information between you and the company, companies use the services of share registries which are organisations that, amongst other things, record any changes in share ownership, issue shareholding statements and manage dividend payments on behalf of the listed company (read more). These are the companies you are receiving the paperwork from.

You will need to visit the website of the share registry of each of your investments and create accounts there in order to instruct them on how to treat your dividends and other corporate actions. Brokers, such as Pearler, do not manage this for you.

There are three main share registry companies in Australia - Computershare, BoardRoom Limited and Link Market Services.

Typically, ETF managers will use the same share registry for all their listed funds.

To find the share registry for a particular company, go to:

www.asx.com.au > Markets > Prices and Research > Company Directory > Search for a company by code or name in the search bar > select the company, once the page has been returned, scroll to the bottom of the page.

Alternatively, you can use the ASX Share Registry Search tool.

All the information you should need to register your investments with the respective registries can be found on the letter you receive after you make your first investment in a company or ETF. Thankfully, additional investments in the same asset do not require further administration!