Don’t buy into Junior Isas

Beware of the Junior Isa. It may look like a good way to save for your child's future - but the government has other ideas, says Matthew Lynn.

The investment management industry might not be much good at generating returns - amonkey with a dartboard would do a better job of beating the index than most fund managers. Nor is the industry good at keeping its costs down, or disciplining the giant companies that it nominally controls.

But there is one thing that it does really well: and that's creating a marketing blitz. When the promotional campaign is backed up by some juicy tax breaks from the government, it can be guaranteed to pull out all the stops.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.