Family Investments: HMRC Child Trust Fund statistics

HM Revenue and Customs has released the quarterly statistics for Child Trust Funds, revealing the number of CTF accounts opened by parents.

The statistics showed a modest improvement in the rate of take-up of Child Trust Funds.

Miles Bingham, Head of Savings and Investments at Family Investments, the UK's leading Child Trust Fund provider, commented: "The latest figures reveal that there has been only a small improvement in the percentage of parents opening a CTF account for their child"

"Both Government and Providers have been striving to generate greater levels of take up, but the latest figures demonstrate how challenging it has been to move things in the right direction with current take up running at below the long-term average. Our fundamental belief is that we would like to see take up at a much higher level, and believe this can only be achieved through a simplification of the whole scheme and by concentrating on providing parents with one clear type of account, the stakeholder version. This action will remove the burden of choice and make the scheme more attractive to busy parents and for those people who struggle to understand the relatively complex options out in front of them. Family has always lobbied for a stakeholder-only product, which is the Government de-fault option for parents who fail to set up an account."