NS&I won’t let granddaughter access cash in inherited bond

I AM writing on behalf of my 20-year-old granddaughter who is busy with university and various jobs. She is trying to locate a Children’s Bonus Bond account with National Savings & Investments, which was set up in her name long ago by my mother and which, until recently, none of us knew anything about.

My mother failed to let anyone know and, although I was her executor when she died in 2011, I didn’t come across any paperwork relating to such an account.

The first my granddaughter knew about it was when NS&I sent her forms to complete confirming all the addresses she had lived at. NS&I also requested she supply the account number which she obviously didn’t have. Can you help?

A.M., Bournemouth. THE subject of your letter rang a loud bell. I remember writing articles in 2018 for sister paper The Mail on Sunday after my research revealed thousands of savers had unclaimed money languishing in defunct Children’s Bonus Bonds — and their replacement Children’s Bonds. The estimated unclaimed figure then was £500million.

In those articles, I urged families to check whether they might have overlooked one of these baby bonds, as they were typically opened by relatives, with recipients often unaware of their existence.

The bonds were popular, paying attractive rates fixed for five years, at one time offering a guaranteed return of 11.84pc a year. Each five-year bond automatically renewed on maturity for a further five years until the child reached age 16 — unless they were cashed in beforehand.

Sales of baby bonds ended in September 2017, and from April 2018 maturing bonds could no longer be renewed. If account holders didn’t claim the cash and NS&I couldn’t trace the owners, the money was swept into the NS&I ‘residual’ account. This is a graveyard account where all forgotten NS&I products end up, paying nominal interest of 0.25pc.

The justification for paying so little is to prevent savers leaving their money to moulder through apathy. I understand the logic, but this is hardly fair for the huge number of young people who know nothing about the accounts set up by loved ones. According to NS&I, the unclaimed balance on children’s bonds now stands at £191million.

When I asked NS&I to help reunite your granddaughter with her money, it confirmed that she is one of nearly 406,600 savers with forgotten accounts holding an average £471. Her bond is worth £168.

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

The first she knew about it was when NS&I wrote to her asking to confirm if she was the same person they were trying to contact. She confirmed she was and where she had lived over the years, but then NS&I told her it could not do anything to help without the account number. This is why you came to me.

I asked NS&I to look again. A few days later it reported that the issue had been with the past addresses supplied as they did not match with their records. But, after my intervention, an agent contacted your grand-

daughter to set about finally releasing her money. An NS&I spokesman says: ‘We have now arranged for a repayment application form to be sent to her with a letter explaining what her investment is and what to do next. We will action her request once we receive it back.’ So, once again, I am urging families that if they suspect a relative could be the owner of a forgotten matured baby bond to take action

to rescue it from the wasteland of

the residual account. Do this by using the NS&I tracing 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 grown-up only son but had to cancel due to complicated and exceptional circumstances. Please can you help?

P.W., Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. YOU described the exceptional circumstances. Your son collapsed and died suddenly in July while on a caravan holiday with you and your wife. You administered CPR but to no avail.

Your son had lived with you for two years following the break-up of his relationship and his death left his two young daughters (who also lived with you half the week) without a father. The tragedy took its toll on you all and was compounded by fears one of you might have the same heart defect that led to your son’s sudden death and waiting for test results to check was highly stressful.

But, on December 7, you got the all- clear and — buoyed by this piece of good news — decided to book a cruise and get away from it all over Christmas. You paid TUI £4,600 for a trip to the Caribbean and went to bed excited at the prospect of a big adventure.

But, during the night, your wife woke up in a panic, suddenly fearful of leaving the grandchildren on their first Christmas without their dad. Your wife was inconsolable all weekend, so you decided

to postpone the cruise, and contacted TUI first thing on Monday, December 11.

All appeared in order. You were simply asked to provide the firm’s exceptions panel with an insurance rejection letter to prove that you were unable to claim on your travel cover, which you did. But you didn’t hear from them until December 28, two days after the original cruise had departed. To your dismay, TUI declined your request and refused a refund because you were effectively ‘no shows’.

I felt TUI could have taken a more empathetic approach and I asked it to reconsider its decision. This time, it responded swiftly and I am pleased to say TUI has let you rebook your holiday for December this year at no extra cost. You are now on course to spend 18 nights in the Caribbean, arriving back on Christmas morning in time to celebrate with the grandchildren.