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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Business
Sam Barker

Premium Bonds shake-up will give new perk to winners who scoop £1million jackpot

Lucky Brits who win £1million on National Savings and Investments (NS&I) Premium Bonds will be forwarded on to one of thousands of financial firms for advice - if they want to.

Premium Bonds are a monthly lottery-style draw with two jackpot wins of £1million.

They are Britain's favourite savings deals, with 21million people owning at least one.

But the lucky winners of the £1million jackpot can easily make bad decisions with the cash.

Of course, if you want to blow your winnings that is entirely your call, but the idea is to help more people spend the cash in an informed way.

So, from April 1, anyone who wins £1million will be forwarded on to get optional financial advice from any certified or chartered financial planner.

These advisers will charge a fee, which varies depending on the firm.

For the past eight years NS&I has been signposting jackpot winners to one firm, Matrix Capital, but now wants to give customers more choice.

NS&I will refer interested jackpot winners to a list of 8,000 qualified advisers.

NS&I head of intermediary relationships Andrew Pike said: "NS&I would like to place on record our sincere thanks to Matrix Capital for providing an excellent service to the Premium Bonds jackpot winners throughout the life of our partnership.

"There is no doubt that this has resulted in many positive outcomes for jackpot winners."

Since the first draw in June 1957, NS&I has drawn 552million prizes with a total value of £22.6billion.

The way Premium Bonds work is that instead of earning interest, you are entered into a monthly prize draw where you can win between £25 and £1million tax free.

This means your chance of winning is completely down to chance - and you may not win anything at all.

Whenever you want to you can get all your original stake back from NS&I, though it may take a few days.

The minimum amount you can have invested in Premium Bonds is £25, and the maximum is £50,000.

Customers can use the nsandi.com prize checker tool and prize checker app to see if they have won.

If you have an Amazon Alexa, you can also ask it to tell you the latest winning numbers.

To see if you've won, you will need to enter your Premium Bonds holders’ number.

Find forgotten Premium Bond prizes

You can find out if any of your Premium Bonds are winners by downloading the prize checker app from the App Store or Google Play, or visit the prize checker at nsandi.com.

Customers can manage their Bonds online at nsandi.com and by phone.

At the moment the odds of a bond winning each month are 34,500 to 1 for every £1 Bond you have invested.

People with the lowest holdings at NS&I have a 1 in 1,380 chance of winning anything every month.

The vast majority of the prizes each month are for £25.

Customers can choose to have their prizes paid straight into their bank account, or to have them automatically reinvested into new Premium Bonds.

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