National Savings and Investments (NS&I) has announced the crucial date by which Premium Bonds must be purchased to qualify for the next exciting prize draw.
Premium Bonds are a savings product from NS&I where investor’s money is entered into a monthly prize draw, offering tax-free cash prizes ranging from £25 to £1million, rather than earning traditional interest.
More than 5.9 million prizes are up for grabs, and winners are drawn at random on the first of every month.
However, to be eligible for a prize, Britons must purchase their Premium Bonds by a specific date, which NS&I has now clarified.
One X user asked: “If I was to buy some premium bonds what’s the latest I can buy to qualify for the end of the month?”
NS&I responded: “Premium Bonds need to be held for a full calendar month before being eligible for a draw.
“The next available draw for newly purchased Bonds is October – to be eligible for the October draw, the latest you can purchase the Bonds to do so would be August 31.”
This means that anyone purchasing Premium Bonds after August 31 will not be eligible for the October draw. They will, however, be included in subsequent draws after that.
How do Premium Bonds prizes work?
Savers can purchase Premium Bonds with a minimum investment of £25, up to a maximum of £50,000. Winners are selected through a random prize draw at the start of each month.
Prizes are tax-free and split into three value bands – higher, medium, and lower. Each band receives a percentage share of the monthly prize fund.
Currently, the annual prize fund rate for Premium Bonds is 4.4 percent and the odds of any £1 Bond number winning a prize are 21,000 to one.
According to NS&I, the more Bonds a person holds, the greater their chance of winning a prize.
A total of 5,935,875 prizes worth £457,062,375 were paid out in the August 2024 prize draw. However, there were 124,653,374,131 Bond numbers eligible for the draw.
Premium Bonds winners are usually notified when they win a prize if their contact details are up to date, or holders can easily check potential winnings via the NS&I website, the prize checker app, or simply by asking Alexa.
To check on the NS&I website, customers will need their Premium Bonds holder’s number, while for the prize checker app, they’ll need their NS&I number or holder’s number.
People can also check for any unclaimed prizes owed to them. According to NS&I, there are currently 2,433,843 unclaimed prizes worth £86,076,800 waiting to be claimed.
