Transferring an existing child trust fund or junior ISA to Beanstalk is very simple. Here we explain why it may make sense to transfer and how the transfer process works.
A bit of background
To encourage long-term saving, the UK Government gave every child born between 1st September 2002 and 1st January 2011 a voucher to set up a long-term savings account called a Child Trust Fund. CTFs are no longer available today, as they were replaced by Junior ISAs (JISA) in 2011. You are not allowed to hold both at the same time, so if your child is in this age range and still has a CTF, you must transfer it to us if you wish to open a Beanstalk Junior ISA.
Under the JISA rules a child can have both a Cash JISA and a Stocks & Shares JISA but cannot have more than one of each. The Beanstalk Junior ISA is a Stocks & Shares JISA, so if you have an existing Stocks & Shares JISA, you must transfer it to us if you wish to open a Beanstalk account. Please note that you do not need to transfer a Cash JISA to open a Beanstalk account unless you wish to.
Should I transfer?
The decision on whether to transfer is obviously up to you. If you think you are paying too much in fees or are disappointed with the returns on your child’s account, then transferring could be a sensible thing to do.
Generally CTFs have become less attractive as providers are not competing for new accounts (e.g. Cash CTFs interest rates tend to be lower than Cash Junior ISAs) and fees on Stakeholder CTFs (and some Stocks & Shares JISAs) are typically around 1.5%, significantly higher than for Beanstalk. The Beanstalk JISA also automatically becomes an ISA when the child turns 18 years old.
Our Switch & Save Calculator will show if you could save money in fees by transferring.
What do I need to do to arrange the transfer?
When you apply for a Beanstalk account, we will ask you if you have an existing account to transfer. If you do, all we need is for you to sign and return to us (via Freepost) a transfer form that we send to your existing provider. We will contact you directly to get the name and account number for the existing provider and to send you the transfer form.
Once we have sent your existing provider the signed transfer form, they will close your existing account and transfer the funds over to your Beanstalk account.
(If you are not sure whether your child has a CTF or cannot remember who the provider is, we explain how to check in this article)