Premium bonds are a kind of lottery bond issued by the Government, that give holders a chance to win monthly cash prizes. You can hold up to £50,000 in the scheme, and just like your other assets, the savings can be passed on after death.
National Savings & Investment (NS&I), which operates premium bonds and other savings products, said in its recent annual report that it has 24 million customers. That’s more than one in three people in the UK population, so the chances that a deceased relative may have held some money through the scheme are quite high.
Whether you have the details of their account or not, you should be able to claim those savings, as long as you are the person entitled to them.
While the bonds themselves are not passed on, the value can be redeemed in cash by whoever.
How do I claim the savings of a deceased bond-holder?
The easiest way to do so is online, using the web form on the NS&I website. Before you start the application, make sure you have the following information on hand:
- Their details including name, address, date of birth, and the date and place of their death
- Spouse name (if applicable)
- Full name of the executor(s) if there is a Will, or administrators if there is no Will
- The type of NS&I account(s) the person held
- Your own details, or those of whoever you are helping to make a claim
- The details of the bank account which the money should be paid into
NS&I will then look into the claim, and might request a grant of representation (also known as a grant of probate or grant of letters of administration). This is a legal document which shows who has been given the legal authority to deal with the late person’s estate. It is likely you will be asked for this if the amount held in bonds is greater than £5,000, but it can be requested on any claim.
Those submitting a bereavement claim will receive a response from NS&I within 14 days at the most.
How do I know if a deceased person had premium bonds?
If you cannot find the relevant paperwork, or the documents you find are old and could be outdated, you can contact NS&I to work out if someone did indeed have any savings with them.
You can either apply directly to NS&I’s dedicated tracing service by post, or use the online service My Lost Account, which also helps customers find accounts with other providers.
You can only ask for a trace on your own account, or for someone you are legally entitled to act on behalf of. That means if you are trying to help someone who is still alive track down their premium bonds, you will need to assist them in making the application themselves, or have some kind of legal right to represent them such as power of attorney.
If the person in question has died, then the executor of their will should be able to ask for an account to be traced.
At the moment, tracing requests can expect a response within around 40 days, a spokesperson for NS&I told i.
Can premium bonds stay in the draw after someone dies?
While you may be keen to find and consolidate all of a person’s assets once they die, you can actually leave premium bonds where they are for up to a year.
Once the holder has died, the premium bonds can remain in the “draw” for 12 months, which means they are still eligible for cash prizes.
Anything won after a death will be held onto while NS&I processes who’s entitled to the money. Once this has been resolved, any future winnings will be sent to that person (the heir of the original account-holder) as a cheque. The prizes cannot be paid electronically.
Once the 12 months is over, the person now entitled to the account will receive everything in it, in the form of a cheque. If you still want to hold premium bonds, you could invest in some new bonds for yourself, or if you already hold the maximum, you could consider opening a new account for a child or grandchild.
