What is a Medallion Signature Guarantee?

If you've landed here, someone has told you that the document in front of you needs a medallion signature guarantee before they'll process it. That someone is usually a transfer agent, a brokerage, or an estate attorney. You've probably been to your bank already. They probably said no.

This page is the article we wish existed the first time one of our customers went looking. We'll cover what a medallion is, when you actually need one, when you don't, and how to get one without driving to three bank branches.

A Medallion Signature Guarantee is a stamp applied to a securities-related document by a financial institution that belongs to one of three industry programs: STAMP, SEMP, or MSP. The document in question is typically a transfer form, a Stock Power, or a DRS instruction. The stamp certifies two things.

First, that the signature on the document is authentically yours. The institution verified your identity the old-fashioned way: government ID, account records, and in most cases a medallion officer sitting across from you.

Second, and this is the part that matters, the institution accepts financial liability if it turns out to be wrong. If a forger walks out with your grandmother's stock certificates and the medallion was applied, the institution that stamped it is on the hook for the loss.

You need a medallion when a transfer agent or financial institution specifically requires one to process an instruction. In practice, that is almost always one of the following situations.

Transferring stock

Any time you are moving shares between accounts, between brokerages, or from certificate form into an electronic record (DRS), the transfer agent will require a medallion on the instruction letter or Stock Power form.

Inherited securities and estate transfers

If you are the executor or beneficiary of an estate that includes stock, which is common with legacy holdings from long-standing companies, you will need a medallion on the transfer instruction that moves the shares to the estate or to the beneficiary.

Beneficiary and TOD/POD changes on securities accounts

Adding or removing a beneficiary on a brokerage or retirement account usually requires a medallion on the change form. This catches many people off guard. It feels administrative, but the transfer agent treats it the same as any other transfer.

Variable annuities

Variable annuities are classified as securities, so many common actions on them (transfers of ownership, surrenders, beneficiary changes, 1035 exchanges) require a medallion. People are often surprised by this because the contract feels like an insurance product. The carrier treats it as a security.

Lost, stolen, or replaced stock certificates

The affidavit of lost securities and the indemnity bond that accompanies it both typically require a medallion.

People are often told to get a medallion when a notary would do. A medallion is only required for securities transactions. It is not required for any of the following.

General real estate and property documents

Deeds, mortgage documents, and property transfers are notary territory, not medallion. If a title company is asking for a "medallion notary," what they actually want is a standard notary acknowledgment.

Power of attorney, health directives, wills

These are also notary documents. A medallion is not the right tool, and in some cases applying one would be outside the scope of what the medallion program actually guarantees.

Routine banking forms

Adding a beneficiary to a bank account, changing an address, or closing a checking account are bank-form matters. No medallion needed.

Historically, medallions were a branch-bank service. If you had a relationship with a bank or credit union, you walked in, an officer looked at your ID, checked your account, and stamped the document. That is still how it is supposed to work.

In practice, over the last decade, most banks have quietly exited the service. The reasons are not secret, and they are not personal. They are structural.

The liability is real.

Every medallion stamp makes the institution financially responsible for the transaction it guarantees. A single forged signature on a large transfer can cost the bank more than a branch earns in a year. Most banks looked at the exposure-to-revenue ratio and decided it was not worth carrying.

The training and bonding requirements are significant.

To issue medallions, an institution must be bonded under a STAMP, SEMP, or MSP program, train and re-certify its officers, and maintain specific documentation for every stamp applied. That overhead does not scale well for a product that most branches encounter a handful of times a year.

The account-holder requirement narrowed things further.

The banks that still offer medallions typically only serve existing customers, often with minimum-balance or length-of-relationship thresholds. If you are not a customer, or if your balance is not above the threshold, a walk-in visit tends to end with "we can't help you here."

Pricing varies by provider and channel. Here is what you should expect to pay, and what each option actually includes.

Online providers (including us) charge a flat fee per stamp that covers identity verification, compliance review, and return of the stamped documents. Bank pricing, where it exists, is often lower per-stamp, but only if you are already a customer and only if your branch still offers the service. The hidden cost at a bank is typically time: multiple visits, multiple callbacks, and sometimes a transfer that never gets processed.

A note on the high end. A few providers tier their per-stamp fee by transaction size, with single stamps on multi-million-dollar transfers running as high as $2,000. We don't do that. Our fee is a flat $300 per stamp. A single stamp covers a transaction up to $500,000; larger transactions are split into multiple stamps at the same flat rate.

This is worth showing, because it is a specific kind of mark with specific components. A medallion looks something like this:

The elements matter. The two STAMP bar marks on either end are machine-readable. The heading identifies it as a signature-and-medallion guarantee. The institution name identifies the bonded entity accepting the liability. The class code is a letter (A, B, C, and so on) plus a dollar-limit indicator, and it tells the transfer agent the maximum transaction size the stamp is good for. The serial number lets the transfer agent verify the stamp against the institution's records if anything looks off.

These are the actual questions people write to us about, in the order they come up most frequently. If yours isn't here, send it. We'll answer it and probably add it.