Premium Bond prize winners revealed for January 2019 – have you started the New Year with a million windfall?
THE winners of January’s Premium Bonds draw have been revealed – and two people are walking into 2020 a million pounds richer. The first winner is a man from Hertfordshire who purchased his winning Bond in April 2015 and has £40,000 invested. The second winner is a woman for Cheshire East who has the maximum […]
THE winners of January’s Premium Bonds draw have been revealed – and two people are walking into 2020 a million pounds richer.
The first winner is a man from Hertfordshire who purchased his winning Bond in April 2015 and has £40,000 invested.
The second winner is a woman for Cheshire East who has the maximum invested amount allowed of £50,000.
She bought her winning Premium Bond in August 2016.
In the January prize draw, a total of 3,471,112 prizes worth £99,215,975 will be paid out.
There were 85,042,266,956 eligible Bonds for the draw.
How to check if you've won
If you think you might have an unclaimed prize, the best way to check depends on what info you have about your Premium Bond account – you'll have been given both a Premium Bond holder's number and an NS&I number.
- If you know your Premium Bond holder’s number, you can go to the NS&I website or download its prize checker app. Enter your holder’s number and it’ll tell you if you’ve any unclaimed prizes
- If you don’t know your holder’s number, but have your NS&I number, you can use that number – which you’ll find on any letters from NS&I – as well as your surname and password to log in to NS&I online and find your holder’s number on the ‘account details’ page. NS&I’s prize checker app also accepts your NS&I number
- If you don’t know your holder’s number or account number, you can phone NS&I on 08085 007 007 or write to it and ask for a replacement bond record to be sent to you. You should give as much detail as you can, for example your full name, address details, when and where you bought your Premium Bonds and how much they’re worth
- Alternatively, you can use NS&I’s tracing service or the My Lost Account website, both of which can track down your Premium Bond details. They ask you to fill out info about yourself including your name, address, an estimate of how many Premium Bonds you hold and how long you’ve held them
- If you find you do have an unclaimed prize, you’ll need to write to NS&I at: NS&I, Glasgow, G58 1SB. Give as much information as you can, including your name and any information about your premium bonds
- Prizes will then be sent to your home address as a warrant, which is like a cheque. Unfortunately, you can’t have unclaimed prizes paid directly into your bank account
- The process is slightly different if the bond holder has died – you’d first need to inform NS&I of the death and then follow the steps above. Any prize money will be paid to whoever inherits the bond holder’s estate
If you haven’t already, it might be worth checking your NS&I account to see if you have won a sum of money that you don’t know about.
There are now more than 1.7 million prizes worth over £64 million still waiting to be claimed by Premium Bonds holders.
To see if you’re a winner, use the prize checker on nsandi.com, the prize check app or via Alexa.
There’s no time limit to claims, so you can go back to the first Bond you purchased.
Most prizes that have gone unclaimed are usually down to winners not keeping personal information, such as a change of address, up to date on the NS&I record.
To avoid missing out on winnings, you can choose to have any future prizes paid directly to your bank account.
In order to do this, register your Premium Bonds and NS&I accounts online.
Since the first draw in June 1957, there have been 456million Premium Bonds prizes, worth £19.9billion.
MORE ON MONEY
NS&I reduced the minimum amount needed to save in Premium Bonds from £100 to just £25 earlier this year.
If you haven’t checked your Premium Bonds for a while, here are the winners for December 2019.
In the last six months, 70,000 new savers under 16 have signed up for the scheme.