My 20-Year-Old Granddaughter Can’t Get the Money Locked in a Long-Lost Childhood Bond: SALLY ORDERS IT

I am writing to you on behalf of my 20 year old granddaughter who is currently busy with college and various jobs. She is trying to locate a children’s bonus account at National Savings & Investments, which my mother opened in her name a long time ago and which, until recently, none of us knew anything about.

My mother did not let anyone know, and although I was her executor when she died in 2011, I did not find any documents related to said account.

The first time my granddaughter found out was when NS&I sent her forms to complete confirmation of all the addresses she had lived at. NS&I also asked her to provide the account number which she obviously did not have. Can you help?

I’m Bournemouth.

Sally Hamiltion replies: The theme of your letter sounded very strong to me. I remember writing articles in 2018 for sister newspaper The Mail on Sunday after my research revealed thousands of savers had unclaimed money languishing in defunct child bonus bonds and their replacement child bonuses. The estimated unclaimed figure then was £500 million.

In those articles, I urged families to check whether they might have missed any of these baby bonuses, as they were often opened by relatives and the recipients were often unaware of their existence.

The bonds were popular, paying attractive fixed rates for five years and at one time offering a guaranteed return of 11.84 percent a year. Each five-year bond automatically renews at maturity for a further five years until the child turns 16, unless they have been cashed in beforehand.

Baby bond sales ended in September 2017, and as of April 2018, expiring bonds can no longer be renewed. If the account holders did not claim the cash and NS&I could not trace the owners, the money was transferred to NS&I’s ‘residual’ account. This is a graveyard account where all forgotten NS&I accounts end up, paying a nominal interest of 0.25%.

The justification for paying so little is to prevent savers from letting their money crumble out of apathy. I understand the logic, but this is not fair to the large number of young people who do not know anything about the accounts opened by their loved ones. According to NS&I, the unclaimed balance of child bonuses now stands at £191m.

When I asked NS&I to help me reunite her granddaughter with her money, they confirmed that she is one of almost 406,600 savers with forgotten accounts averaging £471. Her bail is worth £168.

NS&I said it wrote to her when she turned 16 in 2019. Neither she nor her parents remember receiving any correspondence.

The first she knew was when NS&I wrote to her asking her to confirm if she was the same person they were trying to contact. She confirmed who she was and where she had lived over the years, but then NS&I told her that they couldn’t do anything to help without her account number. That’s why you came to me.

I asked NS&I to take another look. A few days later, he reported that the problem had been with the previous addresses provided, as they did not match his records. But, after my intervention, an agent contacted her granddaughter to finally release her money.

An NS&I spokesperson says: ‘We have arranged for a refund request form to be sent to you along with a letter explaining what your investment is and what to do next. We will deal with your request once we receive it.’

So, once again, I urge families, if you suspect that a relative might be the owner of an expired and forgotten baby bonus, take steps to rescue them from the wasteland of the residual account.

Do this using the NS&I tracking service at nsandi.com or My Lost Account, a service run by UK Finance and the Building Societies Association.

We are having a nightmare trying to persuade TUI to transfer a holiday we were due to take to help us get over the sudden death of our only eldest child, but which we had to cancel due to complicated and exceptional circumstances. Can you please help?

PW, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

Sally Hamiltion replies: You described the exceptional circumstances. His son collapsed and died suddenly in July while on holiday in a caravan with you and your wife. He administered CPR but to no avail.

Your son had lived with you for two years after the breakdown of your relationship and his death left your two young daughters (who also lived with you half the week) fatherless. The tragedy took its toll on all of you and was compounded by the fear that one of you might have the same heart defect that caused your son’s sudden death and waiting for test results to prove this was very stressful.

But, on December 7, he got the go-ahead and, encouraged by this good news, decided to book a cruise and get away from it all for Christmas. You paid £4,600 TUI for a trip to the Caribbean and went to bed excited at the prospect of a great adventure.

But during the night, his wife woke up in a panic, suddenly afraid of leaving the grandchildren on their first Christmas without their dad. His wife was inconsolable all weekend so she decided to postpone the cruise and contacted TUI first thing on Monday 11 December.

Everything appeared in order. He was simply asked to provide the company’s exceptions panel with an insurance denial letter to demonstrate that he could not claim his travel coverage, which he did. But she didn’t hear from them until December 28, two days after the original cruise left. Much to his dismay, TUI rejected his request and refused a refund because he was effectively a “no show”.

I felt TUI could have taken a more empathetic approach and asked them to reconsider their decision. This time he responded quickly and I am pleased to inform you that TUI has allowed you to rebook your holiday for December this year at no additional cost. He is now on his way to spend 18 nights in the Caribbean and will return Christmas morning in time to celebrate with his grandchildren.