Two Premium Bonds holders from Nottingham and Sefton have received a royal windfall ahead of the coronation of King Charles by winning the £1m jackpot in the May 2023 prize draw.
The first winning bond, 350FG197341, was bought in January 2019 by someone from Nottingham, who holds the maximum of £50,000 in Premium Bonds.
May’s second top prize winner comes from Sefton, Merseyside, and holds £46,525 in bonds. Their winning bond carries the number 371JL524811, and was purchased in October 2019.
How many Premium Bonds prizes were there in May 2023?
A total of 5,048,164 prizes were paid out in the May draw, which carry a combined value of £333,178,725.
These were drawn from a total of 121,155,903,514 eligible numbers.
As well as the two £1m bonds, there are 63 winners of £100,000, 125 of £50,000, 250 of £25,000, 625 worth £10,000 and 1,254 valued at £5,000.
The total paid out by NS&I in the 65 years since the very first draw in June 1957 now stands at £25.7bn, from 621 million prizes.
How to check if you’ve won
If you hold bonds and want to check if you’re in line for a prize, you can use the NS&I online prize checker here, or can download the free app from iOS or Android, with the results usually accessible from the second day of the month.
Amazon Alexa devices can also check for you, “remembering” back across the past six prize draws.
Prizes don’t carry a time limit, so you can claim as far back as the original 1957 draw.
However, according to MoneySavingExpert, as of November 2021, there were more than two million unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes, with a total value of almost £75m.
The bonds are often bought for a child, who subsequently forgets about them, while prizes can also be missed if NS&I don’t have the correct address for claimants.
Bond holders can ensure their details remain up to date, and also register to have prizes paid directly into their bank account by managing their account online on the NS&I website.
Registering online can also prevent prizes going missing in the post, with a report last year revealing the scale of such problems.
A Freedom of Information request from Money Saving Expert in April 2019 found that more than 180,000 prizes had not been delivered, with a combined value of £8m – including £66,900 in the previous year.
How likely am I to win the Premium Bonds?
At the start of this year, the interest rate of its prize fund rose from 2.2 per cent to 3 per cent.
The odds of winning stay the same – at 24,000 to 1 – but the change means there are more than three times as many prizes worth £100,000, £50,000, £25,000, £10,000 and £5,000 available.
Announced in December, the increase marked the third upwards change within eight months, with the prize fund rate tripling from the 1 per cent it was in May 2022.
And it meant that there was an extra £80m in higher value prizes awarded in January’s draw.
Alongside the Premium Bonds hike, NS&I has also increased interest rates across several of its other variable products.
Ian Ackerley, NS&I chief executive, said: “The change to the Premium Bonds prize funds rate, as well as the changes to Direct Saver, Income Bonds and Investment Account, will mean that our products are priced appropriately when compared to the rest of the savings market.
“This will also ensure that we continue to balance the interests of savers, taxpayers and the broader financial services sector.”
