Last year I purchased some Taiwanese stocks and, to my chagrin, I just found out recently that I had to personally go around to the offices of those companies (or the representatives) and pick up any dividends and/or stock splits that I received for that year.
When I went to my brokerage to deposit them I asked why I had to do this - surely these could be credited directly to my account. Instantly (god I love this country!) 6 people begin debating/helping/calling supervisors and asking questions.
The long and short of it (although my Chinese isn’t as good as it should be) seemed to be foreigners have to go and do this personally while Taiwanese get it done automatically.
While this is certainly believable, it seems really counterintuitive. I feel this is probably not the case, just no one there could give me an easy answer or I was misunderstanding things.
So…is this the case? If not can anyone direct me to something I can show my brokerage so they can arrange this on my behalf?