There is a difference between being the owner of a security and being the owner of record.  Because of the T +2 Settlement Rule put in place by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), there is no difference between a security that is owned in street name and one where the investor is the holder of record. From a timing perspective, once an investor purchases a stock they become its owner. However, to be considered the owner of record (i.e. entitled to dividend payments, etc.) they usually have to wait for two business days for the trade to settle.
An example of the T+2 Settlement Rule is as follows: If an investor buys a stock on a Monday morning, the trade would not settle until Wednesday (the day of the trade plus two trading days). If the stock made a gain on Tuesday, the investor can turn around and immediately sell the stock on Wednesday to collect the profit. However, they would not see that trade settle until Friday (T + 2). This means that on Thursday, although they would no longer own the stock, they would still be considered the owner of record.
For an investor who is looking to collect a dividend, they will have to pay attention to the company’s ex-dividend date to ensure that they are considered the owner of record on that date. In our example above if they wanted to collect a dividend and the company’s ex-dividend date was on the Tuesday of that week, they would have to make sure they bought the security on the Friday before so they would be considered the owner of record on the ex-dividend date.