Halifax broker gone into administration, page-13

If your shares are CHESS sponsored (which is most retail brokers like Commsec, eTrade, CMCmarkets, Selfwealth etc), you will be issued a holder identification number (HIN). With the HIN, you can go to your company's share register (Boardroom, Computershare or Link market services) and see your holdings on there directly. Since the holdings are held in your name and registered on the share register directly, you can easily transfer your holdings to another broker with an online form. If your shares are held by a custodian, you will not have a HIN number.