Defaqto Engage enhanced for CTF market

From the beginning of September, the first children to get Child Trust Fund accounts received additional payments worth at least £250 from the Government as they reached age 7.

In anticipation of the increased level of adviser and consumer awareness, the Child Trust Fund Table with Defaqto Engage IFA edition, has been enhanced to include a greater range of sift criteria, providing advisers with an opportunity to research the whole CTF market by product type and for the first time have the ability to research Unit Trusts/Oeic funds.

The enhancements include:

Number of funds column with Engage sift and DNA.

Fund Types column with Engage sift and DNA with multi select option to choose varying fund types such as ethical, multi-manager and passive.

Minimum monthly premium with Engage sift and DNA

Fund Associations have been added to the table which will allow Unit Tusts/Oeic funds to be compared using ;-

Defaqto Quantrater

Ratios such as Alpha, Beta, Sharp and Tracking Error

Cumulative and discrete fund performance over various time periods.

Paid directly into every CTF account as the child reaches age 7, the payments offer an ideal opportunity for parents and advisers to review their commitment to the scheme and assess the performance of their accounts, not to mention providing a handy boost to the value of the fund.

Given that even the first CTFs will still have eleven years to run, many will have time to recover any losses made on the back of recent market fluctuations. However, for parents wishing to transfer their child's account to an alternative CTF manager the process is simple and straightforward.

Recent experience has shown that the option to transfer is of particular interest to parents who initially invested their child's CTF in a Cash account, as the benefits of familiarity and perceived capital security have become replaced by uncertainty and minimal growth on the back of low interest rates.

Many are seeing stocks and shares accounts as an increasingly attractive proposition and best placed to benefit from a recovery.