Unclaimed Child Trust Funds: how to find and claim yours (UK, 2026)

2 September 2026 · Inherit Vault

There's roughly £1.5 billion sitting in savings accounts that belong to people in their twenties, and most of them have never touched it. If you were born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011, some of it might well be yours.

What a Child Trust Fund actually was

Between 2002 and 2011 the government opened a long-term, tax-free savings account for nearly every new baby. Most got a voucher worth around £250. Children in care and children from low-income families got roughly £500. The National Audit Office puts the total at more than £2 billion, paid in for 6.3 million children. The scheme closed to babies born after 2 January 2011 and the Junior ISA took over.

Why so many of them got lost

If the parents never got round to opening an account, HMRC opened one anyway, with a provider nobody chose. The paperwork went to whatever address the family lived at in 2006. People move, names change, providers merge and rebrand. The child grows up with no idea any of it happened.

How much is actually sitting there

HMRC's most recent figures run to 5 April 2025. Around 3.5 million Child Trust Funds were still open, and about 758,000 of those had already matured and were still sitting there unclaimed. The average unclaimed matured account held £1,980, which is where the £1.5 billion comes from. Across all CTFs the average was £2,242, up from £2,212 a year earlier. Accounts people did claim in 2024 to 2025 averaged £3,203.

Step one: ask HMRC, it's free

HMRC runs a free tool that tells you which provider holds the account. You can use it if you're 16 or over looking for your own fund, or if you're a parent or guardian looking for a child's. You'll need your National Insurance number, any previous names, and adoption details if they apply. You can't save the form and come back, so do it in one sitting. HMRC writes back with the provider's name, usually within three weeks online. If you've heard nothing after six weeks, write to Charities, Savings and International 1, HMRC, BX9 1AU. It won't tell you the balance, only where the account was opened, and it won't find a Junior ISA.

Step two: the Share Foundation route

There's a second free service at findctf.sharefound.org, run by the Share Foundation, the charity that looks after Child Trust Funds for children in care. Anyone can use it, and it's especially worth using if you were in care yourself. Expect old-fashioned admin: they may email you a form to print and sign, they can't accept an electronic signature, and the reply envelope goes freepost.

Step three: ring the provider

HMRC gives you the name. Only the provider gives you the money. Have your National Insurance number ready, plus the Unique Reference Number if your family kept an old annual statement. Mention every change of name and address since 2011, because a "gone away" marker on your record is usually the only thing between you and the balance.

Ignore anyone who wants a cut

Both routes above are free, and so is ringing the provider. You'll still find firms offering to trace the account for a percentage of whatever turns up. On an average £1,980 account that's a real bite, for a form you could fill in yourself in ten minutes. The same racket circles lost pensions and dormant bank accounts, where the official services are also free.

What happens at 16, and at 18

At 16 you can become the registered contact and run the account yourself. At 18 it matures: you take over automatically, no more money can go in, and you can withdraw the lot or move it into an adult ISA. There's no deadline. Until you do one of those two things it sits in an account nobody else can access, which is exactly how 758,000 of them ended up untouched.

If the account holder can't manage their own money

This is the ugly corner of the scheme. Where the young person lacks the mental capacity to manage the account at 18, the provider can't just hand it to a parent. Someone has to apply for a financial deputyship order: the Court of Protection in England and Wales, the Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland, the Office of Care and Protection in Northern Ireland. For a couple of thousand pounds, that's a lot of process.

If the account holder has died

The money doesn't vanish and it doesn't go back to the government. It passes to whoever inherits the estate, usually a parent, or a husband or wife if the account holder was married. Tell the provider and send the death certificate. There's an early access route if the holder is terminally ill, meaning not expected to live more than six months, and the time limits are oddly inconsistent: six months from diagnosis in England and Wales, twelve in Northern Ireland, none at all in Scotland.

Finding it is the easy half. The reason 758,000 accounts are sitting untouched isn't that anyone hid them, it's that nobody wrote down where they were. Once the provider confirms the account, record it properly: provider, account number, reference, who to ring. Do the same for premium bonds nobody has checked in years and every other asset families quietly lose track of. Money rarely goes missing because it's hidden, it goes missing because the only person who knew about it stopped being able to tell anyone.

Leave your family a map, not a mystery.

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