In 2024 the Library published a new briefing on child trust funds, focusing on challenges that have emerged with beneficiaries accessing their accounts, since they started to mature from 2020.
Originally called 'baby bonds' child trust funds are a financial endowment payable to every child at birth. This note looks at the history of the child trust fund regime up to the announcement that CTFs could be transferred into Junior ISAs and the subsequent decision to phase them out in 2011.