The first £1m jackpot winner is a woman from Dorset who bought her winning bond just two years ago. She holds the maximum of £50,000 in Premium Bonds.

The second person to scoop the big prize is a man from Essex, who invested just £4,000. He bought his winning Bond over 20 years ago, in August 1999.

The two winning ticket numbers are 312TX505194 and 086KL514893.

Jill Waters, retail director at NS&I, which sells Premium Bonds, said: “It’s fantastic to see the randomness of Premium Bonds being shown with October’s winners; one new Premium Bonds millionaire holding the maximum investment and only buying the winning Bond exactly two years ago, while the other purchasing the chosen Bond over 20 years ago and holding only £4,000 in total.

“It shows that no matter your savings goal, Premium Bonds are an accessible and safe way to save, but also to win a potentially life-changing sum of money.”

More than 3.3 million tax-free prizes were paid out to 21 million customers in October.

Recipients who have won between £25 and £100,000 can find out through the prize checker on nsandi.com, the prize check app or via Alexa from Wednesday.

Check if you have unclaimed prizes

According to NS&I, there are 1.6 million unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes worth £63m.

Unclaimed prizes are commonly a result of NS&I not being informed of changes to personal circumstances, such as changes to contact details or addresses.

Customers can choose to have any future prizes paid directly into their bank account. To do this they need to register to manage their Premium Bonds and NS&I accounts online at nsandi.com/register.

October 2019 prize draw breakdown

In the October 2019 draw, a total of 3,392,720 prizes worth £96,975,175 will be paid out. There were 83,121,568,735 eligible Bonds for the draw.

Since the first draw in June 1957, ERNIE has drawn 456 million winning prizes, to the value of £19.9bn.