Premium Bonds warning as £68million in prizes need to be claimed – are you due a payout? | Personal Finance | Finance
Since the first draw in July 1957, around 592 million prizes have been handed out to Premium Bonds holders with a total value of £23.9billion. However, the BBC recently reported that there was a pot of cash worth £68million of unclaimed prizes dating back to the savings schemes introduction. Premium Bonds is a Government-backed saving scheme and people can purchase Premium Bonds for £1 per bond.
However, instead of earning interest, each bond is then entered into a monthly prize draw where people could have the chance to win between £25 to £1million tax-free.
The minimum amount someone can have invested in Premium Bonds is £25, and the maximum is £50,000.
In the November 2022 prize draw, a total of 4.9 million prizes worth £218million were paid out.
However, due to some circumstances, some prizes go unclaimed, an “unclaimed prize” is defined as not paid to the customer/cashed within 18 months of the draw.
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This can happen if the original owner of the bond has died and NS&I has not been notified, or if you move house and fail to notify the savings institution.
Other common cases include where the person was given Premium Bonds as a child which they later forgot about.
Due to there being no time limit on claiming the cash prize, some prizes have remained unclaimed for years.
In 2020, National Savings & Investments (NS&I), the group which manages Premium Bonds, reported that 180,000 winner cheques worth over £8million were returned to them.
DON’T MISS
There are a few options people can take to check if they have won in one of the historic prize draws and it’s a relatively simple process.
People can either head over to the NS&I’s website and log in with their NS&I number, surname, and password.
A person’s NS&I number was sent to them when they registered for either the online or phone service and they can find this number on any letter they have received since having registered.
It will have either nine or ten digits or be an eight-digit number with a letter at the end.
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The results of the latest Premium Bonds draw are usually accessible from the second working day of the month.
The next prize draw results will be unveiled on Friday, December 2.
To be entered into the prize draw, Premium Bonds need to be held for one month before the draw.
This means that if someone buys Premium Bonds now they will be entered into the January 2023 draw.
The results for that draw are expected to be announced on Tuesday, January 3, 2023.
