Premium bonds celebrate 50th anniversary

Time is running out if you want to buy premium bonds to be in with a chance to win the joint biggest prize draw since they were launched, 50 years ago.

Premium Bonds launched 50 years ago on 1 November 1956 and National Savings and Investments (NS&I) is giving away five £1 million prizes in June’s draw to celebrate 50 years of Premium Bonds. There will be three extra jackpots in addition to the usual two, giving customers five chances to win £1 million, plus there will still be over a million other tax-free prizes.

The extra prizes are being introduced by NS&I as part of the anniversary celebrations and are in addition to the normal prizes. The odds of a £1,000 holding winning one of the jackpot prizes is estimated to improve from 16 million to 1 to 6.5 million to 1 for June. The odds of a £10,000 holding winning one of the jackpot prizes is estimated to improve from 1.6 million to 1 to 646,000 to 1. The overall odds of winning any prize with a £1 Bond will remain the same at 24,000 to 1.

For customers to have the chance of taking part in the December draw, they must have bought their Premium Bonds by midnight on the 30th April (you can do so via the website www.nsandi.com)

Sharing success

The Premium Bond prize fund rate will increase from 3.15% to 3.30% tax-free, for the two anniversary draws.

Premium Bonds were designed to encourage saving among people who were not attracted by interest but by winning cash prizes. They were immediately a success story and continue to be incredibly popular – in fact more Premium Bonds have been bought in the last five years than in the previous 45 years put together.

It seems that the nation likes to flutter with Ernie because, unlike the National Lottery, you can get your stake back and 23 million people, almost 40% of the population own more than a joint £32 billion Premium Bonds. And it is also worth remembering that all Premium Bond prizes are free of UK income tax and Capital Gains tax.

NS&I says that with average luck a Premium Bond holder with £30,000 invested should win 15 prizes a year.