NS&I [National Savings & Investments] has revealed this month's jackpot winners, with two lucky people hitting the jackpot this month.
Alongside the jackpot, millions of Premium Bond holders will find out this month if they won something, with prizes starting from £25.
The two winners of the top prize in September’s draw come from Sefton and West Sussex.
The winner from Sefton holds £50,000 in Premium Bonds, and bought winning bond 409PT785413 in August 2020.
The other jackpot winner, from West Sussex, has £50,000 in bonds and bought the winning bond 324MB318235 in February 2018.
Jill Waters, NS&I retail director, said: “There were more than 119 billion bonds eligible for this month's prize draw, with Premium Bonds getting more popular amongst the nation's savers with each passing month.
“Each bond eligible in this month's draw had a chance to win not just the £1million jackpot, but also one of the other more than 4.8 million prizes worth between £25 and £100,000."
The prizes are picked by NS&I’s robot called Ernie. This month, some of the winners Ernie picked include two million pound winners, 10 £100, 000 winners, 20 £50,000 winners, 39 £25,000 winners, 98 £10,000 winners, and 4,774,798 £25 winners. Prizes between £25 and £1,000,000 were distributed to 4,862,556 Premium Bond holders.
HOW TO CHECK IF YOU’VE WON PREMIUM BONDS
If you have ever held Premium Bonds, you can check to see if you have won anything in this draw (from 2 September) or previous ones. There are several ways to find out if you’ve won Premium Bonds.
You can check by using NS&I’s online prize checker (opens in new tab) or the prize checker app (opens in new tab). The prize checker app lets you know how many days until the next draw too.
You can also ask Amazon Alexa via your NS&I number (opens in new tab).
If you have registered with NS&I online you will be informed via email if you’ve won a prize - so make sure the email provided to NS&I is accurate.
Alternatively, if you don’t have the app and haven’t registered online, a letter will be sent to your home address again, just make sure your address record is up-to-date.
You can also check if you have any previous windfalls to collect. You are notified if you win a prize, but if you move or change contact details without letting NS&I know, you could be missing out if you opted to receive your prize via cheque.
Currently, in Sefton, for example, there are 10,928 unclaimed prizes worth £359,625. The largest unclaimed prize is £1,000 and is from the September 1994 prize draw. The oldest unclaimed prize in Sefton is from March 1965 with a value of £25.
In West Sussex, over 39,000 prizes go unclaimed with a total value of £1,278,900. The largest unclaimed one is £5,000 from the March 2007 draw. The oldest one is from 1962, worth £25.
HOW DO PREMIUM BONDS COMPARE TO SAVINGS ACCOUNTS?
In June, the Premium Bond prize rate rose from 1% to 1.4%. This doesn’t mean you will earn 1.4% interest on your savings, but means there will be around 1.4m extra cash prizes on offer to Premium Bond holders
As a result, the odds of each £1 Premium Bond winning a prize increased from 34,500 to 1 to 24,500 to 1. The number of £100,000 prizes went up from six to 10, while there are now 19 prizes worth £50,000 rather than the previous 11 - and there are over a million more £25 prizes to be won each month since June.
The 1.4% acts as an indicator of the average pay out for someone with average luck.
Those with better-than-average luck will make more, and those with less luck can sadly go decades without a win - this is especially true if you only hold a small number of bonds.
If you want a guaranteed return on savings of £1,000, the best easy-access savings account on the market is currently with Shawbrook Bank, earning 1.86% (opens in new tab). This is a guaranteed return, unlike with Premium Bonds.
See our article on the Best Saving Accounts to find the latest interest rates on savings accounts.
For most of us with average luck, a savings account will give a better return than Premium Bonds. We explain more in our article on if Premium Bonds are worth it.
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