HMRC has been reminding people to check whether they have money waiting in a Child Trust Fund. It’s estimated there are over 670,000 unclaimed accounts, with the average account worth more than £2,200.
A Child Trust Fund is a savings account held with individual banks, building societies, or savings providers, which was automatically set up for every child born between September 2002 and January 2011 in the UK.
The scheme itself has ended and has been replaced by Junior ISAs, but the money in Child Trust Funds still belongs to the young person.
The issue is that many people have either forgotten about the accounts, or do not know they exist, because parents may not have kept the paperwork, or the young person has now turned 18 and never realised an account was set up in their name.
You can use the government’s free Find a Child Trust Fund, external tool if you are 16 or over and looking for your own trust fund, or a parent or guardian of a child under 18.
You can then contact the provider to find out the balance and decide what to do with the money. It can be taken as cash, transferred to a standard ISA, or, for anyone under 18, moved into a Junior ISA.