CFT with F&C - charges warning!!!

[DorisIsWaiting]

Just to raise awareness of the small (!) matter of new charges being introduced on F&C shares Child Trust Funds (not F&C stakeholders CFT).

These were orignally designed with NO annual account charges. I received a letter today (well 3 as all 3dd's CTF's are invested there) saying ANNUAL charges would now be £25 +VAT (so probably nearly £30!).

If you are in a similar position to us (not really added much more than the orginal government voucher), there is every chance that by the time the CFT matures there will bevery little left.

Please do not disregard the letter and take a second look. I personnally will be looking into all my options (which also include moving it to a stakeholder with F&C which they have helpfully omitted from their options details ) or changing to another provider.

The moneysaving expert website has some quite detailed threads running about this but I wanted to raise awareness on MN due to the implications for those with DC affected.

Hello Doris.

I went to see my provider as I hadn't added to dds fund as it was a shares trust and I was told initially it wasn't. They were unhelpful and said that all CTFs were the same. I was quite mad as I would like to save for her long term without any risk. I now have this stupid fund I will not add to and have to open a savings account instead.
I will check out money saving expert and thanks for the tip off.

Just wanted to add you can move the fund and change from shares to stakeholder or savings at any time which is definitely what we will be doing!

(morethan we didn't add to the cft as the child automatically takes charge at 18 and we wanted to be sure the dc we in a good (read sensible) place before they had access to too much money!)

Doris, what a brilliant foresight. My half brother in law spent both his and his sisters. Needless to say it took him many years to pay back, he blew the lot.

I am quite now. The fund is with friendly via Barclays as I banked with them at the time.
Both Barclays and my newer bank Santander have told me this isn't possible.
I would have used Santander as well as I have other accounts there and quite often there are good incentives to have more than one account with the same bank.
Thanks for the tip off, I shall go and ask them to explain themselves

I went with F&C too for DDs CTF but will be moving it they've also introduced ridiculous charges across their other products too & clearly want big investors so are pricing the smaller ones out

Will probably go with someone like Children's Mutual who charge at 1.5% I think. They also move the funds into lower risk at the age of 18 to protect the money in latter years.