Halifax - Kids 2-year fixed saver account - not available to babies!

mrsbrook

I spent an hour in the Halifax last week (after waiting 2 weeks for an appointment) trying to open a fixed saver account for my 6-month old baby.

After spending quite a while telling me that if she had money to invest for children she would put it in premium bonds, she eventually typed Thomas' details in. The list of accounts we could open came up, and the fixed saver wasn't there. She checked with 2 colleagues, but no luck. So I left.

She phoned me back later that day to say it was apparently an IT error which meant that these accounts can't be opened for children under the age of 1.

They are currently investigating further, and will get back to me, although I am not sure I would want to open an account with them now anyway.

I just wondered if anyone else had had similar problems, and when, as I am trying to find out how long this has been going on for.

xylophone

If the account you want to open on behalf of a child is not specifically aimed at children, you need to establish whether it can be held in "re" format - (Mrs Brook re (name) Brook). These are sometimes called 'accounts that can be held in Trust".

Usually, even for child specific accounts, there has to be a named adult for children under 7.

I am surprised the woman in the branch mentioned Premium Bonds as the best investment - do you think she might have meant NS& I Children's Bonus Bonds?
The interest rate on these is not great now but they can sometimes be useful for parents investing for children where they have put the maximum in CTF/JISA and want to give additional sums to their own children. This is because of the so called "£100 rule".

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/tdsi/children.htm - for information

Incidentally , I used this http://moneyfacts.co.uk/compare/savings/accounts/search/ and put 0 in age of account holder box.