We moved to Australia – does it mean £4,250 in my daughter’s Lloyds Junior Isa

When my daughter was little, I opened a Lloyds Junior Isa for her. 

Five years ago, our family moved to Australia. The Isa rules said we could keep the account, but no longer pay in as we weren’t British taxpayers. It has £4,250 inside. 

In March this year, my daughter turned 18 and wrote to Lloyds, asking it to close the Isa and pay the cash into her Australian account. This didn’t happen. 

In May, we were visiting family around Britain and tried to close the account in person. We went into three Lloyds branches in different parts of the country which was a great inconvenience, taking three full days of our three-week trip.

The staff seemed bamboozled by the fact we’d moved abroad, and each gave us completely different and contradictory instructions on closing the account. 

To make things more complicated, Lloyds would only phone my daughter’s grandmother, as it wouldn’t accept our Australian mobile phone numbers or an email.

Ultimately we left without getting the money. Is it lost forever? S.T, Australia

Helen Crane, This is Money’s consumer champion, replies: Your story is a sad reflection on customer service at British banks.  

In the era of frustrating AI chatbots, it would be nice to think that walking up to the counter and speaking to a real person would be the one avenue you could rely on to get the answers you needed. 

You even interrupted your family road trip to do so, driving miles out of your way several times to find the nearest branch and wasting time queueing when you could have been catching up with friends and relatives. 

You told me this took up three full days of your three-week holiday, which as a proportion of the cost of the total trip was about £400. 

These efforts were wasted, though, as the fact your circumstances were slightly out of the ordinary seemed to send the branch staff into a spin.

To be clear, your daughter is still perfectly entitled to the money from her Junior Isa, despite now being a resident of Australia. 

Because of their tax-free benefits, Isas can only be opened by residents of Britain. 

If they leave, they can’t pay any more money in – but the account can stay open. 

Your daughter’s Junior Isa was set up when you and her were both British citizens. 

You stopped making new contributions at the end of the tax year in which you moved to Australia, as per the British Government’s rules. 

The money is allowed to continue accumulating interest, though, which it did. 

When the child turns 18, they are allowed to take out the money and close the account. However, they might be taxed on the cash in the country where they now live. 

This is the case for your daughter, but she will still be left with a useful rainy day fund as she embarks on adult life. 

Sadly, her simple request to get her £4,250 provoked all kinds of confusion and misinformation at Lloyds. 

First, she received a letter to your Australian address explaining how to switch her Junior Isa to an adult Isa. Your daughter is not allowed to do this, as she’s not UK-based. 

Over in the UK, you first visited Lloyds’ Windsor branch. 

Staff told you they needed to contact head office and would call you – but you had to hand over your daughter’s grandmother’s number, as they couldn’t accept an Australian phone number or email. 

This made life difficult, as you weren’t staying with her for all of the three-week trip. 

You didn’t hear, so a week later you visited the Ferndown branch in Dorset, where there was no record of your Windsor enquiries. 

After you explained everything again, the staff said they couldn’t close the account. 

A few days after that, grandma received a call saying that Lloyds’ head office had provided instructions on how to close the account, and all your daughter had to do was head to any branch of Lloyds with a form of identification. 

You’d moved on to the Midlands by then, and went to the Redditch branch where your daughter filled out an account closure form. 

But then, she was told she couldn’t have the money paid into an Australian bank account, or in cash – it could only be paid into a UK account.

Reluctantly, you said it could be paid into your own UK account and were told this would happen within a few days.

Three days later, Lloyds…