RBS child trust fund maturity issue

Andre2525

Hi,
I wonder if anyone can give me some advice.
Recently we received a letter from RBS investments stating that the CTF set up by the government on my sons birth date in 2002 is due to mature and sent him instruction on how to claim it.
We have all the required documentation (passport) but upon reading the conditions of his identity verification he is required to his identity certified by one of the below,
Solicitor
Financial advisor
Accountant
The problem is basically that neither he (nor i) have any access to anyone within these professions to be able to do this.
I have tried to contact RBS as per letter but after 5.5 hours on hold I gave up.
Has anyone else had this issue or similar? Am I wasting my time, is this amount of money (approx £1300) just a ploy that is unachievable and I should just rip up and forget about?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Andre

bowlhead99

You would probably find that if you went to Post office and used their verification service to certify a copy of the document as being a true copy of the original (https://www.postoffice.co.uk/identity/in-branch-verification-service) , RBS are not going to say "we don't believe this is a real copy of the original, you need to go and pay a solicitor to say they've seen the original and the copy". 

If the worst came to the worst you could just find a high street solicitors office and offer to pay them £25 to take a photocopy and certify it - if he needs the money, he would probably find it 'worth it' to get his hands on the £1300. The practical problem at the moment is that a lot of solicitors are preferring to working from home at the moment and spend less time in the office, and so may not have a fully manned reception desk or a qualified solicitor able to drop out of a meeting to meet a walk-in customer who wants a copy taken for a token amount of money; they have better things to do with their time.  So the post office is probably a decent way of doing it, given they have 3500 branches.

Andre2525

Hi this was eventually resolved after a little to-ing and frow-ing with regards to the required identity verification, now I believe they DO accept the post office service as sufficient verification in a change of process (I can only imagine there were a few people with similar issues) and once I got through to someone from the helpline they were very helpful.

Thanks for your comments.

Andre

NottinghamKnight

A local solicitor will certify a copy for around a tenner, I had this a few months ago so post Covid.