Child Trust Fund Top Ups

Child Trust Funds are no longer available to open and were replaced by the Junior ISA. But on the plus side, we do offer other saving plans which can be used to save for your child’s future. They’re our Junior ISA and our Child Tax Exempt Savings Plan.

It’s still possible to transfer an existing Child Trust Fund or Junior ISA into a Foresters Friendly Society Junior ISA, simply select the Transfer option when applying online for the Junior ISA, then print and return the Transfer form provided to us by post so we can process your transfer request. If you would prefer to do this solely by post, please call us on 0800 988 2418 so we can send the forms you’ll need.

We no longer accept transfers into our Child Trust Fund. However, we provide a Junior ISA so it is possible to transfer an existing Child Trust Fund or Junior ISA into a Foresters Friendly Society Junior ISA. You can find more information here. Once you’ve made your application and provided details of the policy to be transferred, we will manage the transfer on your behalf.

We provide a stocks and shares Junior ISA. This is pretty similar to a Child Trust Fund and you can pay in £9,000 over the current tax year. Then there’s the Child Tax Exempt Savings Plan, only available through Friendly Societies. This is a tax efficient savings plan that allows you to pay regular premiums of £25 a month into the plan for a fixed term. This means that you decide when you want the plan to mature for your child or grandchild (after the child’s 16th birthday and subject to a minimum term of 10 years).

Yes. The maximum you can top up for the current tax year is £9,000.

If you want to pay in more than £9,000 per year, our Child Tax Exempt Savings Plan can be taken out as well as a Child Trust Fund to further maximise the child’s savings.

No. The Child Trust Fund is designed to offer a financial head start when the child becomes an adult by providing a cash payment when they turn 18 years old. Only in exceptional circumstances can they get their hands on the money. There are further details within the plan conditions which you will have received when you opened the Child Trust Fund.  If you have misplaced these, please call us on 0800 988 2418 and we will answer any questions you may have.

When your child turns 18 they’ll get back at least everything you’ve paid in, plus any annual bonuses that may have been added. That’s our guarantee to you.

No, the only person who can access the money in the Child Trust Fund is your child. And even then it’s locked away until they’re 18.

You control the Child Trust Fund until your child reaches 16. From 16 onwards, your child can control the Child Trust Fund if they wish to.

The money you pay into the Child Trust Fund is invested in Foresters Friendly Society’s consistently well performing with profits Order Insurance Fund. We never forget it’s your child’s money, so we take extra good care of it. The money is spread across a number of different types of assets that may include property, UK government bonds, equities and cash. If the return from any one particular asset type is poor, the investment may be protected from the full impact of this fall as other assets may perform better.

As a friendly society, it’s particularly important to us that our investments are managed in an ethical and responsible way. Foresters is a signatory of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) which demonstrates our commitment to responsible investment, to reducing our impact on the environment and mitigating climate change risk in our investment portfolios.

When you open a plan, you can be confident that investing with us means your money will be invested in a trustworthy and environmentally conscious way. The PRI is the world’s leading supporter of responsible investment and promotes a better understanding of the investment implications of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.

Find out more about the 6 PRI principles we have signed up to here.

Many funds that invest in a variety of asset classes would have a mixture of equities and bonds.  These asset classes traditionally have a negative correlation, meaning that if equities go up in value, bonds generally go down in value.  The opposite happens when equities go down in value.  Over the past few years this correlation has moved to a positive correlation, resulting in equity and bond valuations moving in the same direction.  This can increase the risk of poor returns and increased volatility in fund values.

We use private assets to help diversify our fund and reduce its overall risk, as private assets are not so closely correlated with equity and bond (public) investments and so can help to balance investment volatility.  Private assets also offer the potential for higher returns as they are often long term investments.  The downside is that private assets offer lower flexibility than public assets. We monitor the overall exposure between private and public assets to ensure the mix meets our expected cashflows.

The Child Trust Fund does not pay interest. Instead, by investing the money you pay into the plan into our with profits Order Insurance Fund we provide the potential for growth by way of bonuses. The better the fund does, the higher the bonuses your child could potentially receive. Any profits generated by our fund are used to add an annual bonus and possibly a final bonus when the plan reaches the end of its term.

We have paid annual bonuses on our Child Trust Fund for the past 15 years and although we can’t guarantee that we’ll pay a bonus every year in the future, we can guarantee that your child will get back what has been paid in plus any previous annual bonuses that have been added to the plan.

• In 2022 the annual bonus rate was 1.50%

The annual bonus is applied to the amount you have invested in your child’s Child Trust Fund to date plus any previous annual bonuses that have been added.

The addition of any bonus is not guaranteed. To find out more about the addition of bonuses and how we manage our fund please read our Principles and Practices of Financial Management (PPFM).