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Premium Bonds: are you a big New Year winner?

Paloma Kubiak
Written By:
Paloma Kubiak
Posted:
Updated:
02/01/2018

A Premium Bond holder in Kent and one in Wiltshire will be celebrating after each picking up the £1m jackpot in the New Year Premium Bonds draw.

A man in Kent and a woman in Wiltshire have become the 377th and 378th Premium Bond million pound prize winners.

Premium Bonds, which are offered by the government-backed National Savings & Investments (NS&I), are the UK’s most popular savings product. Each £1 bond is entered into a monthly draw, with two lucky bondholders bagging £1m each.

However, there are a host of other prizes too, ranging in size from £25 to £100,000. In total for the January draw, more than 2.9 million prizes will be paid out, worth £84.7m. See YourMoney.com’s Premium Bond guide for more information.

Are you a Premium Bond winner?

The man from Kent bought his winning Bond (number: 112TQ018654) in July 2006 and currently has £24,580 invested in Premium Bonds. He becomes the 17th Premium Bonds millionaire from the county, and this is the second consecutive month that Kent has landed one of the two top prizes.

Kent is now the third most successful region for winning the Premium Bonds jackpot prize.

The Wiltshire winner has £25,103 invested in Premium Bonds, and her winning Bond (number: 001TA132848) was bought in February 2002. It’s been three years since the last Premium Bonds jackpot winner in the region and the sixth overall.

The winnings are free of income tax and capital gains tax.

Forgotten about old Premium Bonds?

For the more than 20 million Premium Bond holders, they now have more chance of winning a prize and the fund rate also increased to 1.40% from December.

But NS&I reports there are many Premium Bond holders who may have forgotten or be unaware that they have Premium Bonds, and may have previously won a prize that they don’t know about.

In total, there are over 1.4 million unclaimed prizes worth more than £57.5m.

In Kent, there are over 36,000 unclaimed prizes, totalling over £1.4m, and in Wiltshire, there are over 8,000 unclaimed prizes totalling over £330,000.

A prize worth £50,000 remains unclaimed in Kent. The prize was won by a female in the November 2007 draw who has £128 invested in Premium Bonds. The Bond number is 3VT019901. The oldest unclaimed prize in Kent was won by a man with the Bond number AN559184 in the April 1959 draw, and is worth £25.

The highest unclaimed prize in Wiltshire is worth £5,000, having been won in the October 2014 draw. The prize belongs to a woman with £1,505 invested and the Bond number is 185HX014948.

Three Wiltshire residents who have a holding of £5 or less, each have an unclaimed prize of £1,000, while there are five people in Kent who have scooped the prize with a holding of £10 or less.

Jill Waters, retail director at NS&I, said: “Premium Bonds prizes often become unclaimed as a result of people moving house and not telling NS&I, or not keeping their details held with us up-to-date. We are urging Premium Bond holders to reduce the chance of their prizes becoming unclaimed in the future by registering on nsandi.com to have any prizes paid directly into their bank account (with notification by email). There is also no time limit for claiming Premium Bond prizes.”

Since the first draw in June 1957, 389 million winning prizes have been drawn, paying out more than £17.9bn.