More than 66 years after their launch, Premium Bonds are easily the most popular savings deal in Britain. Almost 22.4 million of us will enter the monthly prize draw — that’s a third of the entire UK population.
And in the past year, two big changes by National Savings and Investments (NS&I) gave savers even more reason to invest.
The first change this year was an unprecedented boost to the number of £100,000 and £50,000 prizes on offer.
As recently as the May 2022 draw, there were just six prizes paying £100,000 and 11 paying £50,000. In the most recent April 2023 draw, these prizes were up tenfold, with 62 paying £100,000 and 125 paying £50,000.
Favourite: Premium Bonds are easily the most popular savings deal in Britain with almost 22.4 million of us entering the monthly prize draw
These are the largest prizes paid out after the two £1 million jackpot wins available each month.
As always, you can invest from as little as £25 up to £50,000 and there is no danger of losing your stake — it’s fully protected by a Treasury-backed guarantee.
The second big change has been a boost in the underlying rate paid to Premium Bond savers — by expanding the prize fund and boosting the odds of each £1 winning a prize every month.
This time last year, the underlying rate — or the average prize payout per year — was 1pc. Today it is 3.3 per cent.
And the odds of winning a prize in each monthly draw, as chosen by supercomputer Ernie 5, have fallen from 34,500-to-1 to 24,000-to-1.
All this has been a recipe for more money to pour into Premium Bonds, despite plenty of competition from savings rates finally rising at banks and building societies.
In the April 2023 draw, there was nearly £120.5 billion of cash in Premium Bonds, up from £117.8 billion in April 2022 and £86.1 billion in March 2020.
That means there has been a 40 per cent surge of money pouring into Premium Bonds in just three years. So how much luck do you need to win big on Premium Bonds?
Your route to win £1m
‘I never win anything and I only gave up my job last week. Are you sure Ant and Dec aren’t going to come through the door and say it’s all a joke?’
That’s what one £1 million winner said to NS&I this month after being told about their life-changing sum of cash from Agent Million (the staff member tasked with delivering the news).
Since NS&I introduced its first headline-grabbing £1 million prize in 1994, it has created 504 Premium Bond millionaires. And since August 2014, there have been two £1 million prizes in each draw.
Today, the rest of the prizes available are as follows: £25 (2,145,328 prizes); £50 (1,409,059); £100 (1,409,059); £500 (39,744); £1,000 (12,248); £5,000 (1,246); £10,000 (622); £25,000 (249); £50,000 (125) and £100,000 (62).
There have been special draws with more than one £1 million jackpot on offer — one in December 2006 and one in June 2007, creating five millionaires in each, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of selling Premium Bonds and of the first draw, respectively.
Prize boost: As recently as the May 2022 draw, there were just six prizes paying £100,000 and 11 paying £50,000. In the most recent April 2023 draw, these prizes were up tenfold
The odds of winning £1 million have lengthened in the past year. According to NS&I data analysed by Money Mail, the average Premium Bond holder currently has £5,250 invested in the bonds.
A year ago, someone with a £5,000 holding had a 1 in 11.78 million chance of scooping one of the £1 million prizes in a month.
That has lengthened to 1 in 12.05 million. Those with the maximum £50,000 invested have a 1 in 1,204,502 chance of winning £1 million, compared with 1 in 1,178,198 a year ago.
In the past 12 months, the average holding of the 24 people to win the top prize has been £34,876. Nine of these winners — or just over a third — had the maximum £50,000 invested.
However, one winner scooped the jackpot in February with just a £3,000 holding.
In January, someone won the top prize with £4,625. So smaller holdings can still win big.
The bigger prizes on offer
There is much better news for your chances of winning £50,000 or £100,000, as the number of these prizes has expanded dramatically.
Someone with £5,000 now has a 1 in 388,548 chance of winning £100,000, compared with 1 in 3,927,324 a year ago.
They now have a 1 in 192,720 chance of winning £50,000, compared with 1 in 2,142,180 a year ago.
Someone with the £50,000 maximum holding now has a 1 in 38,855 chance of winning £100,000, compared with 1 in 392,733 a year ago.
They have a 1 in 19,272 chance of winning £50,000, compared with 1 in 214,218 a year ago.
So while it’s harder to win the jackpot, the changes have hugely boosted your chances of winning what is still a potentially life-changing sum of money.
Our analysis of this month’s draw shows the typical holding to win one of the 62 £100,000 prizes was £37,298.
Of those winners, 23 had £50,000 in Premium Bonds, which means 37 pc of them held the maximum investment.
More chances: In the past year the odds of winning a prize in each monthly draw have fallen from 34,500 to 1 to 24,000 to 1
Only two winners of a £100,000 prize had less than the average £5,250 invested: one was a bondholder from Wandsworth, South London, whose £1,000 invested achieved an effective return of 9,900 per cent.
The other was a winner from Cleveland, Yorkshire, who had £5,004 invested. That is equal to a return of 1,988 per cent.
The move to offer more large prizes to bond holders takes the buzz around the monthly draw up a notch, according to Anna Bowes from Savings Champion.
‘Essentially, they are Lotto-style prizes but without the risk of losing your stake,’ she says.
The underlying rate of return has been boosted by having more of the larger prizes, as well as by axing some of the smaller ones.
A year ago, there were 3,324,584 prizes paying out £25. NS&I has made huge cuts to these smaller prizes, with 2,145,328 remaining in the most recent draw.
Still look at savings deals
The underlying 3.3 per cent rate of return on Premium Bonds is a bone of contention for many savers.
If you had £5,250 saved (the average in Premium Bonds) in a standard savings account at a bank or building society, a rate of 3.3 per cent would pay £173.25 in interest over the course of a year.
But that’s not guaranteed interest. Because the draw is randomly generated by NS&I’s ERNIE computer, it is perfectly possible never to win a prize.
With £5,250, you have a 36.9 per cent chance of returning £175 over the year and a 7.24 per cent chance of returning nothing at all, even with the enhanced rate on offer.
All the prize rate actually means is that for each £100 paid into bonds, only £3.30 is paid out to holders with average luck.
Kevin Mountford, the co-founder of savings platform Raisin, says: ‘It’s exciting to be in the Premium Bonds draw, but savers shouldn’t put all their eggs in that basket.’
Savers with an easy-access Yorkshire Building Society account can currently earn 3.6 per cent on the first £5,000 and 3.1 per cent over that, or £192.15 interest over the year.
With a one-year fixed deal, savers can get 4.54 per cent interest at Oxbury Bank, meaning £238.35 interest.
