Two lucky premium bond holders have each won a £1m jackpot in NS&I’s May prize draw.
The jackpot winners are from Surrey and Wiltshire, while five other winners received the next-best prize of £100,000.
Here, Which? reveals the winning premium bond numbers and looks at how many unclaimed prizes are yet to be reunited with their winners – could one of them be you?
May 2021 premium bond prize winners
This month, the two £1m prizes went to premium bond holders in Surrey and Wiltshire.
The man from Surrey purchased his winning bond number (436VB112388) very recently in February 2021 as part of an overall holding of £43,590.
The second jackpot-winning bond number (340LX170519) belongs to a man from Wiltshire. It was purchased in September 2018, and is part of an overall holding of £34,000.
- Find out more: premium bonds – are they worth it?
How many winners were drawn in May?
There were 3,123,205 premium bond prizes given out in the May prize draw, worth a total of £89,792,075. Of these, 3,115,839 were worth £100 or less.
| Value of prize | Number of prizes |
| £1,000,000 | 2 |
| £100,000 | 5 |
| £50,000 | 10 |
| £25,000 | 20 |
| £10,000 | 49 |
| £5,000 | 100 |
| £1,000 | 1,795 |
| £500 | 5,385 |
| £100 | 29,186 |
| £50 | 29,186 |
| £25 | 3,057,467 |
Source: NS&I
Could you be the winner of an unclaimed prize?
Each time you win a premium bonds prize, NS&I will contact you – either by letter or email, but in some cases, these alerts get lost and if you’re not signed up to automatically receive your prizes via bank transfer or reinvestment, your prize could sit unclaimed.
NS&I says there’s currently almost £71m of unclaimed prizes waiting to be reunited with their premium bond holders. As you’d expect, the majority of these prizes – more than 1.3m – are worth £25, but there are several higher-value prizes that haven’t been claimed.
There are five £100,000 winners, eight £50,000 winners and nine £25,000 winners who will all be much richer once they’ve been matched up with their prizes.
According to NS&I’s records, there are no £1m prizes left unclaimed.
Where are the most unclaimed prizes in the UK?
Those living in outer London seem to be the worst for missing their premium bond prizes, with 216,298 unclaimed prizes awarded to bond holders registered as living in the area, worth almost £8m.
What’s more, premium bond prizes registered to inner London holders total 147,107, worth over £5.6m, meaning the city as a whole is responsible for more than 360,000 unclaimed prizes.
There are a further 207,000 unclaimed prizes for bond holders whose residence is unknown or overseas, worth almost £9m.
The fewest unclaimed prizes are registered to bond holders in the Isle of Anglesey – just 1,852, in fact, followed by residents in Gwynedd who account for 2,909 unclaimed prizes, and North of Northern Ireland where there are 3,012 prizes waiting to be claimed. This is likely to be due to the fact that there are fewer people with premium bond investments in these areas.
- Find out more: what is National Savings & Investments?
How to check for unclaimed premium bonds prizes
There are a few ways to check if you have an unclaimed premium bonds prize – you’ll need to contact NS&I and have a few bits of information to hand.
If you’re registered for online and telephone banking with NS&I, its phone or online chat service will be able to help look for any unclaimed prizes.
NS&I also has a prize checker tool, which you can use on its website or mobile app. To use this, you’ll need to know your holder’s number, which will either be made up of nine or 10 digits, or eight digits followed by a letter.
If you don’t know it, you can log in to the website, where you can find your holder’s number, as well as your prize history so you can see if there are any you might have missed.
Alternatively, you can write to NS&I to inform them about a missing prize. In the letter, you’ll need to provide your name, holder’s number, current address, plus any previous names or addresses premium bonds may have been registered to, along with your signature.
This can be sent to NS&I, Sunderland, SR43 2SB.
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/05/premium-bond-winners-in-may-2021-could-you-have-an-unclaimed-prize/