National Savings and Investments, the government backed savings body, has deployed extra staff to deal with a possible last-minute surge from older savers rushing to get their hands on the hugely popular pensioner bonds before they are withdrawn from sale at midnight on Friday.
The bonds, which have been available since January from NS&I, were announced by the chancellor in March 2014 as a sweetener to the over-65s, the only savers eligible to buy them.
The rates of interest are 2.8% for a one-year bond and 4% for a three-year bond – far better than the return available on savings accounts in the wider market.
The best rate on a more widely available three-year fixed bond is currently 2.7%, according to moneyfacts.co.uk.
“The rates are so good that when they were announced we thought NS&I had made a mistake,” said Susan Hannums, a director at savingschampion.co.uk.
“Anyone who hasn’t already got one but is eligible should snap them up while they still can.”
NS&I will be hoping there is not a repeat of the stampede it witnessed when the bonds were launched in January. Then, the volume of older savers trying to take them out caused the NS&I website to crash and blocked its phone lines.
“We’ve already served hundreds of thousands of customers, and we have deployed extra staff in our call centres to meet any increase in demand in the final weeks, should this occur,” a spokesman for NS&I said.
Initially £10bn was made available to cover both the one- and three-year terms and it was a fear of this level being reached within days that caused the initial rush.
A month later George Osborne announced that the bonds would be available for a further three months after an initial take-up by 600,000 savers.
The savings institution has declined to reveal the latest figures on take-up. It would only say that as of 12 March, £10bn of bonds had been sold to 825,000 people. The next sales update will be issued after the product has been withdrawn from sale.
Pensioners can apply online at NS&I or by phone on 0500 500 000 until 23:59 on Friday 15 May.
At the withdrawal time the Apply Now button on the website will be removed, so that anyone who has not already started their online application will be prevented from doing so, the NS&I said.
“Any customer who is part way through an application will be able to continue going through the process to complete that application. At the same time the downloadable application form will be removed from the website along with other content changes to move the product to off-sale status.”
The bonds might have been welcomed by thousands of over-65s but they have not been greeted with such enthusiasm by everybody.
“Pensioner bonds have never been anything other than a gimmick that will benefit pensioners at the expense of the taxpayer,” said Mark Littlewood, director general of the free market thinktank the Institute for Economic Affairs.
