THE winners of October’s Premium Bond prize draw have been revealed and there are two new millionaires.
One of the winners is a man from Kent, who purchased his winning bond – 298BE137181 – in March 2017.
The second winner is a woman from Humberside, who bought her winning bond – 222AT412192 – in June 2014.
Both winners owned the maximum amount of £50,000 in Premium Bonds.
In the October prize draw, a total of 3,921,323 prizes worth £112,084,475 will be paid out. There were 96,072,406,201 eligible numbers.
The results come after National Savings and Investments (NS&I) confirmed it will slash the odds of winning for Premium Bond holders.
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 a National Savings and Investments 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.
Currently, it pays 1.4% on them, so each £1 bond has a 1 in 24,500 changes of winning.
But this will be cut to 1% from December 2020, lowering your odds of winning to 1 in 34,500.
In addition, NS&I will stop sending out cheques to Premium Bond winners from December 2020.
Instead, winners will be paid directly into their bank account.
Ahead of the change, customers are being asked by NS&I to make sure their contact and bank details are correct so they don't miss out on a prize.
Holders should visit nsandi.com and click "log in", go to "your profile" and select "your prize options" to update their information.
Since the first Premium Bond draw in June 1957, 499million prizes with a total value of £21.1billion have been drawn.
But last year, NS&I warned that more than £63million Premium Bond prizes haven't been unclaimed.
It means you could be sitting on winnings that you don't know about.
To see if you're a winner, use the prize checker on nsandi.com, the prize check app or Amazon's Alexa.
There's no time limit to claim, so you can go back to the first Premium Bond you purchased.
Check back and see if you were a winner in the September Premium Bond draw.
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