Two lucky premium bond holders have each won £1m in NS&I’s July prize draw.
The jackpot winners are from County Durham and East Riding of Yorkshire, while five other winners received the next-best prize of £100,000.
Here, Which? reveals the winning premium bond numbers, and looks at which age groups of premium bond holders tend to be luckiest when it comes to winning prizes.
July 2021 premium bond prize winners
This month, the two £1m prizes went to premium bond holders in County Durham and East Riding of Yorkshire.
The winner from County Durham is a man who purchased their winning bond (441KH440355) in February 2021, which makes up part of a £20,025 total holding.
The second winner is a man from East Riding of Yorkshire, who has a total holding of £50,000. They purchased their winning bond (439DR814317) in February 2021, too.
- Find out more: what is National Savings & Investments?
How many winners were drawn in July?
There were 3,199,250 premium bond prizes given out in the July prize draw, worth a total of £91,978,375. Of these, 3,191,699 were worth £100 or less.
| Value of prize | Number of prizes |
| £1,000,000 | 2 |
| £100,000 | 5 |
| £50,000 | 11 |
| £25,000 | 20 |
| £10,000 | 53 |
| £5,000 | 104 |
| £1,000 | 1,839 |
| £500 | 5,517 |
| £100 | 29,884 |
| £50 | 29,884 |
| £25 | 3,131,931 |
Source: NS&I
Which age groups are luckiest?
People of any age can hold premium bonds. Parents, grandparents and others can buy them for children as soon as they’re born; anyone can buy or manage premium bonds for themselves once they reach 16.
This means that some children have gone on to win the jackpot prizes; in the last five years there have been four £1m prizes paid to premium bond holders aged 15 or under. Over the same period, under 15s won more than 2m prizes of all values.
But, of course, more adults hold premium bonds than children – and it seems those aged 70-74 are luckiest. This age group has won 19 jackpot prizes over the past five years, accounting for one in six of the available £1m prizes. In total, they were awarded over 14.5m prizes during this time.
The graph below shows how each age group has fared over the past five years for winning premium bonds prizes of any value, using data from NS&I covering June 2016 to May 2021.
The pattern is similar when it comes to the £1m jackpot, as shown in the graph below:
There are several reasons why some age groups seem to be luckier than others. One is that those aged 45 and above are likely to have more disposable income to put into savings than younger premium bond holders – and the more premium bonds you hold, the more likely you are to win a prize.
What’s more, the longer you hold your bonds, the more prize draws they’ll be in – again increasing the likelihood that they’ll get picked for a prize. So, if you haven’t been lucky with prizes yet, you might just have to wait until you hit 70.
- Find out more: premium bonds explained
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/07/premium-bond-winners-in-july-2021-how-old-are-the-luckiest-prize-winners/