Child trust fund account help

Tripletmummy

Looking for some help regarding my son's CTF. Last week he contacted the company to see what the status of his CTF was and cash it out into his own bank account. He was overjoyed to find that the balance of the account was a whopping £133 582.98! He continued through all of the steps to verify himself etc and provided his bank account details for the transfer to be effected. 

Roll on three days later, he was contacted by the company via email informing him that there was an error and to call them. This he did to be told that they had found an error in his account and that they currently did not know how this occurred or what was actually in the account. They refused to give further details over the phone and now he cannot log into his CTF account at all. It appears that it has been closed by the company.

Does anyone know what his legal position is regarding this? Or who he should contact going forward to get a resolution to this?

Any help would be gratefully received.
Thanks

eskbanker

If they've made a mistake, then they presumably need to establish what the actual maturity value is, and obviously they need to ensure that this is correct this time - he's not entitled to the higher erroneous figure, but the company will presumably advise him shortly what the correct value is.

artyboy

Tripletmummy said:

Looking for some help regarding my son's CTF. Last week he contacted the company to see what the status of his CTF was and cash it out into his own bank account. He was overjoyed to find that the balance of the account was a whopping £133 582.98! He continued through all of the steps to verify himself etc and provided his bank account details for the transfer to be effected. 

Roll on three days later, he was contacted by the company via email informing him that there was an error and to call them. This he did to be told that they had found an error in his account and that they currently did not know how this occurred or what was actually in the account. They refused to give further details over the phone and now he cannot log into his CTF account at all. It appears that it has been closed by the company.

Does anyone know what his legal position is regarding this? Or who he should contact going forward to get a resolution to this?

Any help would be gratefully received.
Thanks

How much was actually paid into the CTF, beyond the initial £250 from the government? I ask because for many people that were actively contributing to these over years - certainly to the point where they might have grown to the very large sum you mention in your post - they would have moved over from a CTF to a (more mainstream) JISA...

If it was just the original £250, then however disappointed your son may be, he's certainly not going to get anything like £133k back!

Tripletmummy

Thanks both for your input. So should he contact the company again to find out what he actually is entitled to or wait for them to get back in touch? And if so, how long should he reasonably be expected to wait for them to sort this out?

eskbanker

Tripletmummy said:

Thanks both for your input. So should he contact the company again to find out what he actually is entitled to or wait for them to get back in touch? And if so, how long should he reasonably be expected to wait for them to sort this out?

How was it left when he last spoke to them?  If he didn't do so at that stage, asking them about next steps and timescales wouldn't be an unreasonable request....

R200

Can you give any details on how much you put in on top of the £250?

also what did you choose as the investment for 18 years?

refluxer

If someone maxed out the CTF/JISA allowance every year and had ended up choosing what turned out to be the best-performing fund over the last 18 years, would a £133.5k balance even be possible ?

Curious to know just how consistently well the find would have to perform to achieve that growth ! Would make a great little Excel problem...

artyboy

refluxer said:

If someone maxed out the CTF/JISA allowance every year and had ended up choosing what turned out to be the best-performing fund over the last 18 years, would a £133.5k balance even be possible ?

Curious to know just how consistently well the find would have to perform to achieve that growth ! Would make a great little Excel problem...

If we are talking about someone recently turning 18 then yes, very easily. The annual contribution limit for JISAs has been £9000 for some years now, so even if kept in cash, a maxed out account would be around that level.

My point was that any parent that had been making significant additions over the years would be unlikely to have left it in a legacy CTF

eskbanker

artyboy said:

refluxer said:

If someone maxed out the CTF/JISA allowance every year and had ended up choosing what turned out to be the best-performing fund over the last 18 years, would a £133.5k balance even be possible ?

Curious to know just how consistently well the find would have to perform to achieve that growth ! Would make a great little Excel problem...

If we are talking about someone recently turning 18 then yes, very easily. The annual contribution limit for JISAs has been £9000 for some years now, so even if kept in cash, a maxed out account would be around that level.

Not sure about 'very easily' - this is the start of the fifth year of £9K, but it was less than half that in previous years, so (assuming no funding in 2024/25), a maturing account could have attracted circa £78K of contributions by my rough calculations, of which only £42K would have been in the account for over four years.

daveyjp

CTF started with a max annual contribution of just £1200. 

R200

daveyjp said:

CTF started with a max annual contribution of just £1200. 

So you put about £21K in over 18years?
What did you choose to invest in?
do you know how much it is now?