Part 8: Help-to-Save Section 36: Successor accounts for Help-to-Save savers
This section inserts a new paragraph 13A into Schedule 2 to the Savings (Government Contributions) Act 2017. Paragraph 13A provides the powers for the making of regulations which allow for the balance in a matured Help-to-Save account, at the end of the four-year term when it ceases to be a Help-to-Save account, to be transferred to an alternative savings account (the successor account) in the National Savings Bank. This would occur in instances where the account holder has not provided instructions to the Director of Savings to inform them where the balance should be paid.
	Sub-paragraph (4) restricts the regulation-making powers where instructions have been received from the account holder. The Director of Savings may not transfer a balance from a Help-to-Save account to a successor account in instances where the account holder, or a person acting on their behalf, has provided instructions to the Director of Savings to transfer the balance to another account and those instructions are received in sufficient time for them to be acted on.
	Sub-paragraph (5) permits the regulations to make provision for balances in existing accounts, opened prior to the regulations being made.
	Sub-paragraph (6) specifies that the successor account may be a new or existing account and that the transfer of a Help-to-Save balance to a successor account will not result in a charge to the account holder. There are currently no fees charged to account holders for holding money with NS&I, including the existing savings account product currently planned to be used for the intended successor account.