Recovering the £½ Billion in unclaimed Child Trust Funds

One of the goals of ShareSoc Investing Basics is to raise awareness of the Child Trust Funds.

You may recall Gordon Brown introduced Child Trust Funds in 2005 as explained in this article in This is Money, who are partnering with ShareSoc to help the Investing Basics videos reach as wide an audience as possible.

Every child born in the UK between 1/9/2002 and 2/1/2011 was given £250, placed into a trust fund, for access at 18. With no other additional investment, the funds for those turning 18 this year could be £750.

The issue is, many parents have forgotten about these funds – collectively, apparently, to the tune of £ ½ Billion. Since every (UK born) child in the school currently holds one (or a matured one if they have already turned 18), is this something worth reminding 6th form students about?

ShareSoc think so and have prepared a template email which can be downloaded here, which includes further background information.

We recommend that all members write to their local school/college about this. Cliff Weight reports that he mentioned this to his sister-in-law who promptly wrote to the head of Y13 at her local school where her son attended and got an enthusiastic and grateful reply.

When you write to your local school/college, please send us a copy at InvestingBasics@ShareSoc.org and let us know if your school agrees to do this. We would like to keep track of the effectiveness of this campaign.

This is an official news item, written by ShareSoc Director and Education Chair, Cliff Weight.

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