Shutterstock / fizkes
This article is for general guidance only and is not financial or professional advice. Any links are for your own information, and do not constitute any form of recommendation by Saga. You should not solely rely on this information to make any decisions, and consider seeking independent professional advice. All figures and information in this article are correct at the time of publishing, but laws, entitlements, tax treatments and allowances may change in the future.
The number of unclaimed Premium Bond prizes has reached £100 million – and some of the cash could be yours. There are 2,598,139 unclaimed prizes worth £103,270,175, according to National Savings & Investments (NS&I).
That’s a massive amount of cash. Many people aged over 50 could have bought Premium Bonds when they were issued in paper format, and simply forgotten about them. So it’s worth digging out your Premium Bonds and checking whether some of it belongs to you.
What’s on this page?
Premium Bonds are a savings product issued by NS&I, the UK’s state-backed savings bank. Vix Leyton, consumer expert at ThinkMoney, says: “Every pound represents a ticket in a monthly prize draw, a bit like the National Lottery but with the key difference being you get your pound back whatever happens.
“The prize pot is made up of tax-free cash rewards between £25 and £1m. Whilst it shouldn’t necessarily be the only savings product you look at, it can be a fun part of the mix if you’re someone who likes a flutter.”
Exactly how the prize pot is split varies from month to month, but there are always two £1m winners. The July 2025 prize draw gave out 80 prizes of £100,000 and 158 of £50,000 – although the number of these prizes has fallen for the August draw since the prize rate has gone down.
Lower prizes of £25, £50 or £100 are most common – these account for about 80% of the prize pot and almost 5,945,000 prizes in the August draw. According to NS&I, the odds of winning are about 22,000 to 1 for every £1 bond in the monthly prize draw.
NS&I also calculates a Premium Bond ‘prize fund rate’ (3.6% for the August 2025 draw), but it’s hard to directly compare this to the return from a savings account, since most people don’t win anything.
Up-to-date figures for the number and value of unclaimed Premium Bonds are published by NS&I each month. Of the 2,598,139 unclaimed prizes across the UK, 11 are £100,000 prizes. You’re most likely to be sitting on a fortune and not know it if you live in London or the south east.
In the capital there are 386,616 unclaimed prizes, worth a total of £15,338,425; while the south east has the highest number of unclaimed prizes at 389,713, worth a collective £14,996,600.
And many of these prizes could have been forgotten about for years. NS&I’s annual report and accounts for 2024/25 show that the total sum of prizes that haven’t been claimed for at least 15 years has risen from £31m to £32m in the past year.
NS&I does its best to match up winners with their bond records, but name changes (due to marriage, divorce, or other reasons), people moving home without updating their details, and bondholders dying, can make this a difficult task.
An NS&I spokesperson said: “NS&I has successfully paid out over 99% of all Premium Bonds prizes to our winners since 1957. The amount of prizes currently unclaimed represents just 0.28% of the total £37 billion awarded by ERNIE [NS&I’s Random Number Indicator Equipment] over nearly seven decades.
“Unclaimed prizes gradually accumulate every month and are primarily being won by bond holders who have not registered their details or have moved without telling us, and their cheques are being returned.”
The easiest way to check for unclaimed wins is to set up an online NS&I account on the NS&I website. You'll need your Premium Bond holder’s number or NS&I number. Once registered, navigate to Premium Bonds, and then “Check for prizes”.
Prizes will then be sent to your home address as a warrant (like a cheque). Unfortunately, NS&I can't pay historical unclaimed prizes directly into your bank account.
Alternatively, if you have really ‘lost’ your premium bonds and don’t have account details, you can try the NS&I’s free tracing service.
Figures revealed by a Freedom of Information request from Saga Money show that the service – which covers all NS&I products – tracked down £177m in lost accounts last year, reuniting account holders with an average pot worth £3,000. The service requires you to download and print a form.
If you don’t have a printer, or prefer to complete the process online, you can use the My Lost Account service instead, which is run by UK Finance and the Building Societies Association.
When it comes to future draws, having a NS&I online account makes checking for prizes, and banking them, much easier.
Vix Leyton says: “The best thing to do is set up an online account with NS&I. It’s very simple, whatever your proficiency level for tech. Once you’re online, they’ll email you if you win, and you can keep track of everything from your phone or laptop without rummaging through files.”
Bondholders can also download the NS&I smartphone app – this will show if you have won within a couple of days of each draw.
You can opt to have any new prizes paid directly to your bank account or reinvested into more premium bonds (assuming you haven’t hit the £50,000 limit).
In some cases where a bondholder has died, their relatives may have been unaware of the Premium Bonds in their name, or any unclaimed prizes.
A NS&I spokesperson says: “There’s no time limit to submitting a claim for Premium Bonds after someone has died. NS&I provides a useful guide on its website on what to do when someone dies, providing all the information on how to submit a claim for premium bonds and other NS&I accounts. You will need to be the beneficiary or executor to make a claim on an estate and provide certified evidence.”
Premium Bonds continue to be entered for 12 months after the death of the holder if the beneficiary chooses to not withdraw the money. During this period, the bonds remain eligible for prize draws, and any winnings will be paid to the estate.
If you need to claim the NS&I savings, or Premium Bond prizes, of someone who has died, you can do this online, without needing to create an online account.
You’ll need to make sure you have all the deceased person’s details to hand, and that you are legally entitled to claim their savings. NS&I will tell you if it needs a grant of representation (also known as a grant of probate or grant of letters of administration) once it has received your completed form. It may ask for this if the deceased person’s total NS&I savings were £5,000 or over.
Find out what will be the best home for your cash.
Find out what happens next & what to do if you’re worried about your ISAs.
