What are Child Trust Funds?

If you were born as a UK citizen between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011, it's likely you have a Child Trust Fund in your name, even if your parents aren’t aware of it.

The government opened Child Trust Funds on behalf of children if their parents didn’t do it before they turned one. If you think you might have a Child Trust Fund that was opened for you by the government, you can check their website.

If you think you might have a Child Trust Fund, and if your parents don’t remember which company they opened it with, or if the government opened it on your behalf, you will need to contact HMRC to find out where it is. You can start this process by visiting the website to ask HMRC to find a Child Trust Fund.

No. Please do not pay anyone to find your Child Trust Fund for you or agree to pay a company a percentage of it in return for them tracking it down.

When you turn 18. This is when your Child Trust Fund 'matures', which means the money becomes available.

It’s not possible to withdraw any money from your Child Trust Fund before you turn 18.

The registered contact is the person who looks after and can instruct us on managing the Child Trust Fund, for example transferring it to another provider.

Before the age of 16, this is usually your parent or legal guardian. Once you turn 16, you can become the registered contact yourself and take over the Child Trust Fund. When you turn 18, you’ll automatically become the registered contact.

When Child Trust Funds (CTFs) were introduced by the Government in 2005 one of the requirements of the Stakeholder CTF account was to include a lifestyling facility. This meant that, from age 13, the money invested in your child’s CTF would gradually be moved to lower risk investments, meaning the money invested would be protected from stock market performance as they reach 18.

In 2015 the Government increased the age at which lifestyling needs to start from 13 to 15 years of age and in 2017 they made another change by removing the requirement for lifestyling altogether.

Given the range of tax-efficient savings now on offer for children, Scottish Friendly has therefore chosen not to adopt lifestyling and so your child’s CTF will continue to be invested in the same fund until it matures on your child's 18th birthday. If, however, you want lifestyling, your child’s CTF can be transferred to another CTF provider who offers this feature at any time free of charge.

At 18, your Child Trust Fund 'matures'. That means the money can be taken out or moved to a different type of account.

You’ll need to let us know what you’d like to do with the money. No-one else can do this on your behalf. We will write to you before your 18th birthday with your options and what to do next.

If a young person is unable to manage their own affairs and needs extra support from their parent or guardian, we ask that you get in touch with us so we can help. We’ll look at each situation on a case-by-case basis and will do our best to make the process as smooth as possible.

Call us on (UK) 0333 323 5433 or (Eire) 3531 800 816 736. 

Phone lines are open Monday to Friday, 8.30am to 5.30pm.

For your protection, calls may be monitored and recorded.