Child trust fund help

alibaliboo

Hi good afternoon, 
My son was born in 2004 and received the £250 child trust fund check. We put it into Halifax at the time then Halifax wrote to us and said you need to move it so we did . When my son turned 18 we logged into the child trust fund account and to our horror it had matured at only £650 when most of his friends and Martin Lewis even said on his program that it should be £2000. I contacted the company involved they said it was a good return on £250 and it was all to do with the shares when Halifax opened the account. My daughter got the same £250 4 years later in 2008 she has more shares and a bigger investment return already and it’s not even matured yet. 
I would appreciate some help and advice on what I should do or who do I go to to make sure my son gets the correct amount he’s in titled to like every one else 
Look forward to hearing back from you on this issue . 
Kind regards 
(Removed by Forum Team)

artyboy

Hello and welcome. Firstly, I'd suggest you remove your real name from your post.

The key question here is what was the money invested in? It's entirely possible (and reasonable) that the final value could be very different for both children if (for example) one was kept as cash and another invested in a stock market fund.

For that matter, with the years you mention, they could both have been invested exactly the same, but if your younger child's CTF was started at the end of 2008, they would have benefitted from an investment at a market low point (given what happened that year) and so their money would have grown even more.

The brutal reality is that it was on you to keep an eye on how these investments were performing, so if it's not doing what you want, you can move it to a different provider or product. But if you can share what both CTFs were invested in, we should at least be able to confirm if these numbers seem right...

daveyjp

All down to how the money was invested and how much ongoing management you did over 18 years. 

We were proactive with my daughters, invested over the years and received a decent amount compared to total invested.

Any cash investment would see poor returns due to the years of very low interest rates.

wmb194

alibaliboo said:

Hi good afternoon, 
My son was born in 2004 and received the £250 child trust fund check. We put it into Halifax at the time then Halifax wrote to us and said you need to move it so we did . When my son turned 18 we logged into the child trust fund account and to our horror it had matured at only £650 when most of his friends and Martin Lewis even said on his program that it should be £2000. I contacted the company involved they said it was a good return on £250 and it was all to do with the shares when Halifax opened the account. My daughter got the same £250 4 years later in 2008 she has more shares and a bigger investment return already and it’s not even matured yet. 
I would appreciate some help and advice on what I should do or who do I go to to make sure my son gets the correct amount he’s in titled to like every one else 
Look forward to hearing back from you on this issue . 
Kind regards 

Some of it will be to do with what it was invested in and, if in investments, the randomness of what was going on in the markets during the term but why have you left it 20 years to see how it’s doing? It’s too late. 

If it was invested in the stock market there is no, “correct amount.” Where was it invested? Was it with a friendly society by any chance?

artyboy

Not to pile on too much here, but the fact that these are/were still CTFs, and hadn't been transferred into JISAs, suggests a lack of active oversight/management. CTFs are a decidedly legacy product now and there limited options available that offer a good return when compared to a JISA.

Another thought that occurs is that if the elder child's CTF matured in late 2022, and was invested in a multi-asset fund (which would have been a typical default option), then it would have suffered a last minute drop due to the falls in the bond market that year...

I appreciate it's probably not what the OP wants to hear, but there was never some organisation or individual that was doing the job of looking out for their child's investment to make sure it was performing the way they wanted it to. Exactly the same as other investments and for that matter most modern pensions, we have to do that legwork ourselves, or choose to pay someone else to do it for us...

Keep_pedalling

With a single one off payment into the same investment over the same time frame you are going to see a wide difference in outcome depending on when the account was opened. Start the account at the bottom of a market crash is going to see far greater gains than starting at the peak of a major bull run. 

If you had topped the accounts up on each birthday by £200 you would have likely evened things up somewhat for each of your children as 18 deposits over 18 years is not subject to the same level of random luck that a single payment is.

Jami74

My children were born 2 years apart and despite using the same company and options got very different results. 

eskbanker

alibaliboo said:

Martin Lewis even said on his program that it should be £2000

I doubt very much that he used those words - as above, investment returns are highly variable, depending on product choice and time period, and so it would be rash and meaningless to quote a single figure to set people's expectations!

MX5huggy

eskbanker said:

alibaliboo said:

Martin Lewis even said on his program that it should be £2000

I doubt very much that he used those words - as above, investment returns are highly variable, depending on product choice and time period, and so it would be rash and meaningless to quote a single figure to set people's expectations!

Here’s where Martin has used £2000 I’ve not watched the video. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/kLPiBF2jV3qpxnQF/?mibextid=WC7FNe

artyboy

MX5huggy said:

eskbanker said:

alibaliboo said:

Martin Lewis even said on his program that it should be £2000

I doubt very much that he used those words - as above, investment returns are highly variable, depending on product choice and time period, and so it would be rash and meaningless to quote a single figure to set people's expectations!

Here’s where Martin has used £2000 I’ve not watched the video. https://www.facebook.com/share/r/kLPiBF2jV3qpxnQF/?mibextid=WC7FNe

It's really intended for the (younger) beneficiaries themselves, and more as a warning not to pay scammers.... erm, I mean entirely legitimate claims companies, to get them access to their own money.

But of course, people are going to latch on to the £2000 figure (or rather the £2212 average figure Martin quotes later on) - some qualification there would definitely have been helpful...

kaMelo

I agree people will simply pick out the £2000 figure whilst ignoring the context then, as in this case, wonder why their CTF is lower. There is also the fact the amount received from the Government could range between £250 and £1000, once you add in investment choice and performance over that period coming up with an average figure of £2000 is rather meaningless as the outcomes could be substantially better or worse than that.