Estate Planning as a Career

The Child Trust Fund Voucher

Opening a trust fund account is simple. The parent needs to use the voucher sent to you by the government. You will need to take the voucher to the chosen account provider and they will use this as the first deposit in the Child Trust Fund account. The CTF voucher is send to you once you have applied for Child Benefit. The voucher is very important as you cannot open your Child Trust Fund without it.

When you receive the voucher it is very important to check the child’s names and date of birth are correctly displayed on the voucher. You can call the CTF helpline if they are not correct and the government will issue you with a new voucher. Each voucher contains a unique reference number. You should take a photocopy of your Child’s voucher and keep it in a safe place in case you need to make any enquires at a later date.

Once you have the voucher the sooner you invest the voucher the quicker it will begin to grow into a trust fund. The voucher contains an expiry date and you do invest the voucher before this date then the government will invest it in a trust for you. If this happens the government will send you details of where they have invested the fund and you can apply to have the fund registered in your name and you can choose to move the account to another provider.

Type of Accounts

There are a large number of different providers of Child Trust providers by the account tend to fall into two main types.

Savings Accounts

One is a straight cash based savings account where the investment will accrue interest on the sums invested at a set interest rate. The account is secure but due to inflation may lose value over time. That will also be costs from the provider from running the account.

Stakeholder Accounts

The difference with Stakeholder A (more…)