The first winner from Surrey purchased his winning bond in January 2018 and has £41,595 invested in Premium Bonds. His ticket number is 319ML537267.

September’s second winner from Hertfordshire purchased his winning Bond in January 2019. The winning number is 350AS143074 and he has the maximum £50,000 invested.

Ian Ackerley, chief executive of NS&I, which runs Premium Bonds, said: “Each £1 Bond has an equal chance of winning and whether it is a high value holding like September’s winners or a smaller standing order that builds up steadily over time, the magic of Premium Bonds is that regular savings habits can lead to life-changing sums of money.”

Buy for nieces, nephews and family friends

Under recent rule changes, anyone aged 16 or over can buy Premium Bonds on behalf of children under the age of 16 meaning that aunts, uncles and family friends, as well as parents and grandparents, can now give children the gift of Premium Bonds.

Premium Bonds can be bought as gifts online at nsandi.com/gift or by post. The buyer will need to nominate one of the child’s parents or guardians to look after the Bonds until the child turns 16.

Unclaimed prizes

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

Premium Bonds may go unclaimed for reasons including if NS&I don’t hold your current address details or if you had bonds bought as a child but have since forgotten about them.

Customers can make sure that their details are up to date and choose to have any future prizes paid directly into their bank account, by registering to manage their Premium Bonds online at nsandi.com/register. This will help reduce the likelihood of prizes becoming unclaimed.

How to check if you’re a winner

You can check if you’ve won using Amazon’s Alexa. Once you’ve put in your details you just need to ask Alexa if you’ve won. Alexa will also let you know what you have won in the previous six draws and if you have any unclaimed prizes.

You can also check your bonds on the prize checker on nsandi.com or the official Premium Bonds prize checker app.

September prize draw breakdown

In the September 2019 draw, a total of 3,368,108 prizes worth £96,271,675 will be paid out. There were 82,518,577,254 eligible Bonds for the draw.

Since the first draw in June 1957, there have been 452 million winning prizes, worth £19.8bn.