As the new chairman of the UK Shareholders’ Association, 39 year old Chris Hulme is considerably younger than a typical private investor. Nevertheless, Hulme – the MD of a mortgage brokerage and insurance company – has ambitious plans to broaden the Association’s membership. In particular he wants build stronger ties between a younger generation of investors and UKSA’s more experienced members. He also intends to introduce a new spirit of co-operation that will see the Association work closer with institutional investors and work harder on educating companies on the value of opening their doors to the retail community.

Since April 2008, Hulme has been on one of UKSA’s satellite committees – the Northern Rock Shareholders’ Action Group. In 2009 he became chairman of that group and was later invited on to the Board of UKSA in April 2010. In the aftermath of recession – in which many shareholders in Britain’s banks suffered considerable losses – the focus at UKSA has very much been about levelling the playing field for private shareholders. To do it, the Association is lobbying hard both with quoted companies and the Government to address some of its key concerns – particularly the issues of communication and regulation.

Chris, tell me about the UK Shareholders' Association – how does it work?

UKSA been established for about 17 years now. It has always maintained its independence from any commerciality, from any bias and from any outside influence and it has been solely led for the members by the members. Everybody who works in UKSA is a volunteer so it is very much a labour of love.

The family tree comprises the Board of Directors and then four Board Committees. So we have one that I chair, which is the Company Campaigns Development Committee, we have a Policy and Media Committee responsible for setting policy, challenging policy and lobbying Government and we have a Membership and Regions Committee, which looks after each of the regions that we have and membership interests on a local level. We also have the Management and Finance Committee, which is responsible for the operational side of things. Under each of those committees we are setting up work groups of non-directors - people who have particular expertise within those areas. So under the Campaigns Committee we’ll have the Northern Rock Committee, we’ll have the Bradford & Bingley Committee, we’ve…

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