Street researchOwnership & infrastructure

The case for a
better transfer agent.

Moving ownership shouldn’t mean chasing documents, approvals, and answers. A closer look at the work behind a transfer—and why we’re building Mimir.

By the Street teamSeptember 13, 2026Sources & further reading

Someone wants to transfer shares. The company wants to know who is buying. Counsel wants the right approvals. The transfer agent needs a complete instruction.

Each request makes sense. The frustration starts when the shareholder has to hold the whole process together.

The work between the steps.

A transfer agent performs essential work: maintaining the issuer’s securityholder records and recording ownership changes. It sits between the company and its holders, where an accurate record matters as much as a completed transaction.¹

But a transfer can become a project of its own. One party has the certificate, another the instructions, another the approval. When those pieces travel separately, someone has to find the latest version, explain the same request again, and check that the final record matches what was authorized.

For shareholders

The missing instruction.

A missing document or an unclear next step can turn a straightforward request into repeated follow-ups.

For company teams

The conflicting record.

A cap-table export, a signed agreement, and the official register need to tell a consistent story.

For counsel & operations

The disconnected approval.

The approval needs to stay connected to the specific security, parties, and instruction it covers.

When the paper goes missing2–3%of the certificate’s market value

Investor.gov says a replacement certificate’s indemnity bond usually costs 2–3% of the missing certificate’s current market value. That is a cost of replacing lost paper, before considering the work of the transfer itself.²

A digital form is a beginning.

The industry is already moving online. Computershare describes digital transfers with identity verification and document uploads, avoiding printing and mailing for eligible requests. Its published initial eligibility includes U.S. individual accounts with book-entry shares free of stops or restrictions.³

That progress matters. It also shows why private-company ownership needs a more connected approach. The harder cases involve restrictions, different share classes, company decisions, and evidence that must survive long after the form is submitted.

The ongoing work matters, too. In August 2026, the SEC reported examination findings involving failures in lost-securityholder searches and recordkeeping.⁷ Keeping ownership information useful means maintaining it after the transaction, including when a holder becomes difficult to reach.

Our view is that the next improvement comes from connecting the whole case: what was requested, what was required, who authorized it, and what was ultimately recorded.

The instruction.
The approval.
The ownership record.
Three parts of one complete story.

A connected ownership process.

Mimir is the transfer agent inside Street. We’re building around a simple principle: the people doing the work should share the context they need, with the ownership record at the center.

That means designing the experience around a complete transfer case, from the initial instruction through review and recordkeeping. These are the standards we’re building toward.

Start with a clear request.

Identify the security, the parties, the quantity, and the supporting documents together. Surface missing information while the request is being prepared.

Make the next step visible.

Show what is waiting for review, who needs to act, and which requirements remain. A submitted request and an approved transfer should look different.

Keep the evidence with the decision.

Connect consents and instructions to the change they authorize. Preserve the history so a later review can follow how the record came to be.

Close the loop on ownership.

Record the authorized change in the appropriate books and make the resulting records available to the parties entitled to see them.

The opportunity is less repeated administration, clearer responsibility, and a record that can be explained. Speed should follow from that design; it should be measured, not assumed.

The record behind the record.

Getting this right also means being precise about who owns what. The issuer’s register identifies registered holders. Where a custodian or nominee holds shares, the intermediary’s records identify investors’ entitlements to that position. A transfer between participants can change those entitlements while the registered position stays the same.⁶

Figure 01 · Illustrative ownership structure

Two records.
One consistent position.

Issuer’s share registerRegistered custodian / nominee

1,000common shares · unchanged

Intermediary’s entitlement records

Illustrative transfer of 100 entitlement units between two participants, backed by an unchanged registered position of 1,000 common shares.
Participant	Before	After
Seller	600	500 −100
Buyer	400	500 +100
Total entitlement units	1,000	1,000

Illustrative example: one entitlement unit per underlying share. The applicable agreements define the actual rights and recordkeeping responsibilities.

A useful ownership system makes those relationships visible. It should help people reconcile the records without implying that every trade rewrites the issuer’s register, or that a ledger entry alone completes settlement.

Control stays with the company.

Better software still has to respect the security’s terms. For example, the SEC’s guidance on public resale of restricted securities explains that removing a restrictive legend requires issuer consent, usually supported by an opinion from issuer counsel.⁴

For a private-company transfer, the applicable agreements and legal pathway determine the required consents, restrictions, and reviews. Mimir’s role is to make the recordkeeping and the evidence easier to follow. Company approval, legal review, and settlement conditions remain substantive steps.

This is the transfer agent we want to work with ourselves: clear about what it needs, transparent about where a request stands, and precise about the ownership it records.

Registered. Building forward.

Street Labs, Inc. is registered with the SEC as a transfer agent, File No. 084-07093, effective August 20, 2026.⁵ This article describes Mimir’s product direction; availability depends on the company and the service. Transfer-agent registration is separate from broker-dealer, trading-venue, and transaction approvals.

Discuss Mimir with Street

The reading behind this perspective

Sources & further reading.

Primary guidance and published service descriptions, reviewed September 13, 2026. Examples illustrate specific sources; practices and requirements vary by agent, issuer, security, and account.