Top up your Junior ISA

Junior ISA’s are no longer available to open with Foresters. But on the plus side, we do offer a Child Tax Exempt Savings Plan which can be used to save for their future.

We no longer accept transfers of Junior ISA’s.

Your child can have a Junior Cash ISA, a Junior Stocks and Shares ISA or both. If you hold both, the combined total which can be saved this year must still be within the annual Junior ISA allowance.

Unlike Adult ISAs where it’s possible to have multiple ISA accounts from different tax years, your child can only hold one cash Junior ISA and one stocks and shares Junior ISA.

Your money is invested in our With Profits Fund (WPF) with the aim of providing investment growth. Dependent on the performance of our fund, we aim to add annual bonuses and a final bonus to your child’s Junior ISA which will increase their plan’s value. The addition of bonuses is not guaranteed.

We never forget it’s your child’s money, so we take extra good care of it. Within our fund, your money is spread across a number of different types of investments to help minimise risk and increase the potential returns. This way your money benefits from exposure to a range of asset classes which may include equities (company shares), fixed interest bonds (government and company), property and cash.

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 Foresters Stocks & Shares Junior ISA doesn’t pay interest. Instead, by investing the money you pay into the plan into our With Profits Fund we provide the potential for growth through bonuses. What growth your child’s Junior ISA receives will depend on the performance of our fund.

The following annual bonus rates have been declared for the Junior ISA:

The annual bonus rate is applied to the amounts you have invested, less the amounts you have withdrawn, and any annual bonuses that have been previously added.

The addition of any bonus is not guaranteed and your child may not get back the full amount originally invested, dependent on the investment conditions at withdrawal.

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).

We may vary the design of a product to best meet the needs of our policyholders which may affect the timing and size of future bonuses. Therefore the above table is provided for information purposes only and should not be considered an indication of likely future performance.

There is an Annual Management Charge of 2% of the value of your Junior ISA. We deduct charges upfront before we declare bonuses. This means there are no additional charges for you to pay. This charge could change, but we promise it will never exceed 3% of the value of your Junior ISA in any one year. The charges are designed to cover our costs for administering the JISA on your behalf. For more information about charges, please take a few minutes to read the relevant Junior ISA  Key Information Document and Important Information.

No – no one can access the funds legally before the child turns 18. In other words, the plan is locked.

Once your child turns 18 they’ll be able to access their Junior ISA. Their lump sum can be used to further their plans. It could help them with university fees, saving towards a deposit on a house, or even buy their first car.

Anyone can pay into the Junior ISA so, in this case, another person can carry on with the payments.