Fifth of Brits say they set up a Child Trust Fund that is now lost or dormant

1 year ago

£765 MILLION LANGUISHES UNCLAIMED IN MATURED CTFS ALONE

• 19% of British adults, rising to 36% of those aged 18-34, believe they may have lost a CTF

• Over half of all CTFs that have matured in the last 18 months are unclaimed

• One Family, UK’s largest CTF provider, joins the Gretel hub to reconnect consumers with lost and dormant accounts

New research from Gretel has found that almost a fifth (19%) of British adults1, rising to 36% of those aged 18-34, believe they may have lost a Child Trust Fund (CTF), or let one set up on behalf of children or grandchildren become dormant.

Gretel, the free online hub which reunites consumers with lost and dormant accounts across the financial service industry, has gone live and OneFamily, the UK’s largest CTF provider, is one of the first companies to sign-up to the new centralised hub.

Six million CTFs were set up for children born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011, and around 55,000 CTFs mature each month2. However, according to The Investing and Saving Alliance (Tisa) about 525,000 accounts are thought to have matured since September 2020, with 53% of these, valued at £765 million, still unclaimed3.

Duncan Stevens, Chief Executive of Gretel said: “We want to get the money from ‘lost’ child trust funds back to the younger generation where it could make a huge difference to their life. A fifth of all UK adults believe they may have lost track of a CTF or let one set up on behalf of children or grandchildren become dormant, which we estimate is valued at £2.2 billion and this is money that could be used to help buy a first flat, pay off educational debts or buy a first car.

“Our mission at Gretel is get the billions of dormant, lost and unclaimed money from savings, investments and pensions back into the hands of the consumer, where it belongs. Gretel is the only hub that gives you direct access to your lost money.”

Paul Bridgwater, Head of Investments at OneFamily said: “If parents didn’t get round to opening up a CTF and depositing the savings voucher given to them by the Government, the money wasn’t ever lost – it was automatically invested in a CTF on their child’s behalf. So, for the 18 years up to maturity the account may have been accruing value without their knowledge. By now it could be a handy nest-egg.

“If a OneFamily CTF isn’t claimed when the young person reaches 18, they don’t need to worry about their savings disappearing. The money continues to be held safely with us and receives the benefits of the fund until the young person gets in touch.

“ OneFamily has been working hard to reunite young people with their money, which is why we’ve partnered with Gretel and have also set up a simple to use identification process to make things as easy as possible for our customers.”

Gretel estimates that 19.6 million people in the UK have become disconnected from financial services products including 1m child trust funds, 10 million bank accounts, 2.5 million life insurance policies and 1.6 million pensions, which has generated dormant or unclaimed money with a collective value of over £50 billion4.

Gretel’s research also found that of the 74% of consumers have never tried to track down a lost or dormant account including CTFs, pensions, bank accounts and investments:

• Almost a third (31%) haven’t tried to find them because they didn’t know how to do it or where to start - up from 26% in 2020

• One in five (19%), rising to 25% of those aged 18-34, didn’t even known they could search for lost and dormant accounts

• 15% assumed it was so long since they lost track of their account/money that it was no longer theirs anyway

• One in ten (10%) think the process to track down lost money is too costly, rising to 17% among those aged 18-34 years

Gretel is a free online hub that uses intelligent technology to reconnect consumers with lost money in less than three minutes and then help them reclaim it directly. Uniquely, once a customer has signed up with Gretel, the service will keep working for them to constantly look for lost monies and flag any new accounts as and when they are identified. Gretel is the only service that will cover the entire financial services industry.

Notes to Editors

For further information, please contact:
Louise Ahuja, LouiseBComms: louise@louisebcomms.co.uk/ +44 7788 676913
Karen Mignon, LouiseBComms: karenemignon@gmail.com / +44 7766 651327

Notes to editors
1 The research was conducted by Opinium Research for Gretel between 18-22 March 2022 among a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults in the UK.

2 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-teenagers-missing-out-on-child-trust-fund-cash

3 According to TISA - https://www.tisa.uk.com/


Duncan Stevens, Tom Simmonds and Ashley Hollands, as the founders of Gretel, have over 60 years of experience in financial services and technology between them. They have run some of the largest financial tracing businesses in the UK, returning over £2.5bn in forgotten and dormant assets to over 1.5m people.

They have been directly involved with the Government’s Independent Commission on Dormant Assets in recent years and, in response to the Commission’s recommendations, have built Gretel as a free to use platform for consumers, transforming the ease and speed with which they are able to find their money, regardless of where it is in the financial system it was lost.
How will Gretel work?
Gretel is designed to help consumers find everything from their first bank account to a forgotten pension. It uses cutting edge technology to make the financial world a smaller place, bringing

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About Gretel

Gretel is part of IntelliTeq, which focuses on simplifying complex financial processes. IntelliTeq solutions assist companies in complying with regulatory challenges around data and empower customers through the use of proprietary technology.