Child Trust Fund

[Stygimoloch]

My daughter was born in 2009 and so received a Child Trust Fund. It used to be with the Children’s Mutual but then changed to Foresters Life. The actual account is called Stakeholder Options.

We’ve added to it over the years and there is also a monthly DD of £25 so there is now £3400 in there.

However, we received the statement the other day and this time last year she had £3584 in there. So of the £270 we’ve put in over the last year, £184 has been lost.

I’m really not a master of the stock market but I understand there are risks and stocks and shares can go up and down. My question is, whether I should continue adding to the trust fund or whether I should start a new savings account for her to put the direct debits in. This would mean that her new savings would be safe and I could leave the trust fund as it is and see what it’s worth when she’s able to access it.

If anyone has any knowledge of this, I’d be most grateful! Thanks.

I swapped my 2 over to a junior ISA with Tesco after getting the CTF annual statement in to find the same as you (basically lost what was deposited). They were also with Forester Life.

The application was all online and the paperwork was sent out to be signed. It all went very smoothly

It may be possible to move the existing investment into a different fund with a lower risk. I worked in IT on the CTF product many moons ago and I vaguely remember there being different products with different levels of risk, obviously the higher the risk the higher the possible returns.

Don't know if you can open new child trust funds but you can certainly transfer from CTF into Junior ISAs now

Thanks for the helpful info both. That’s really interesting about transferring to Junior ISAs @dementedpixie. How did you go about doing that? Sounds like it could be the answer.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/child-trust-fund-vouchers/#tip5 this gives info

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/junior-isa/

Tesco one used to be on the list too. I went with it as you could do an online application

www.tescobank.com/savings/isa-accounts/junior/

It says on the page that Children with a Child Trust Fund are not eligible for a Junior Cash ISA but that just means you can't have both. They take transfers in of CTFs. Some don't

@dementedpixie brilliant. Thank you.

Check Martin money-saving experts recent advice because I don't think there's as much benefit to moving to junior isa as there was, but no harm

There is a benefit if the rate is better than the CTF. And you cant swap a CTF to a regular savings account

I also transferred to a Tesco Junior ISA after stocks went down. It's low interest but at least it keeps what we invest into it.

I also transferred my son's CTF to a Jr ISA. It ended up being a faffy due to paperwork going missing and COVID but it's all sorted now and much easier to keep an eye on and pay into.

Have exactly the same situation here, also Foresters. We haven't added to it so it's only a few hundred pounds but I was alarmed by how much it went down last year. I was especially pissed off because a friend with approx the same amount in a different CTF said hers had increased.

I opened a Tesco Junior ISA but in the time it's taken me to get round to transferring the funds over, the Foresters CTF has gone up again by £30. I'm tempted to leave it where it is now.

We have just cashed in my daughters ctf (with foresters too actually) which was stocks and shares, we actually did well and gained almost an extra £500 from the trust fund alone.
I didn’t want to risk losing any of our own money though so we added monthly to a different isa account. I felt it was almost worth ‘risking’ the initial money as that wasn’t ours to begin with so to speak, but didn’t want the chance of losing any more we paid in ourselves.
The online account was helpful with foresters as we could see a visual chart of how the money did over certain months.

@AnnPerkins

Have exactly the same situation here, also Foresters. We haven't added to it so it's only a few hundred pounds but I was alarmed by how much it went down last year. I was especially pissed off because a friend with approx the same amount in a different CTF said hers had increased.

I opened a Tesco Junior ISA but in the time it's taken me to get round to transferring the funds over, the Foresters CTF has gone up again by £30. I'm tempted to leave it where it is now.

Tesco organised the transfer of funds from the CTF to the ISA. Was all done with a few weeks.