Two lucky premium bond holders have won £1m each in NS&I’s August prize draw.
The jackpot winners are from Devon and Wales, while five other winners received the next-best prize of £100,000.
Here, Which? reveals the winning premium bond numbers, and looks at whether those who bought their premium bonds in certain years are proving to be luckier than others.
August 2021 premium bond prize winners
This month, the two £1m prizes went to premium bond holders in Devon and Wales.
The first winner is a woman from Devon, who bought their winning bond (404KX510146) in July 2020 as part of a total holding of £1,001.
The second winner, a woman from Wales, has had their winning bond (202ZQ082477) since March 2013, when it was automatically reinvested after a previous premium bonds prize win. She has a total holding of £10,051.
- Find out more: what is National Savings & Investments?
How many winners were drawn in August?
There were 3,231,548 premium bond prizes given out in the August draw, worth a total of £92,906,925. Of these, 3,223,917 were worth £100 or less.
| Value of prize | Number of prizes |
| £1,000,000 | 2 |
| £100,000 | 5 |
| £50,000 | 11 |
| £25,000 | 21 |
| £10,000 | 54 |
| £5,000 | 106 |
| £1,000 | 1,858 |
| £500 | 5,574 |
| £100 | 30,190 |
| £50 | 30,190 |
| £25 | 3,163,537 |
Source: NS&I
When is the luckiest year for jackpot prizes?
Now we’re two-thirds of the way into the year, it seems 2021 is shaping up to be pretty lucky for premium bond holders who bought their bonds since 1 January.
Of the 16 jackpot winners in 2021, three bought their premium bonds in 2021 – February 2021, to be precise.
There have also been seven £1m winners so far from bond numbers purchased during 2020.
Does this mean that newer bonds are more likely to win the jackpot?
The graph below shows the number of winners that have resulted from buying premium bonds over the past 10 years, using data from NS&I.
As the graph shows, premium bonds purchased in 2015 have resulted in the most jackpot winners.
It makes sense that premium bond numbers that have been in the draw for several years are more likely to have been chosen as jackpot winners, as they’ve been entered into more draws than more recently purchased bonds.
The number of bonds being purchased during each year is also a factor. Due to poor savings rates, money has continued to pour into premium bonds this year.
Between June and July alone, more than 1bn new premium bonds were purchased; the overall number of premium bonds has increased by more than 10bn since the start of 2021. With so many bonds purchased in 2021, it makes sense that some of these are being picked as jackpot winners.
How are jackpot winners chosen?
Each month, the premium bonds prize draw is carried out by NS&I’s ‘Electric Random Number Indicator Equipment’ (also known as Ernie). This is essentially a computer that generates random numbers, which are then matched against corresponding premium bond numbers to determine the winners.
So, if you’ve had premium bonds for years and are still waiting for that jackpot win, you don’t need to give up hope. In fact, the July 2019 draw saw a bond number chosen which was first purchased in November 1956.
Only premium bonds that have been held for at least one calendar month are entered into the draw. So, if you were to invest in more premium bonds tomorrow, you’d have to wait until the October draw for them to be entered as they’d still be less than a month old by the time of the September draw.
- Find out more: premium bonds – are they worth it?
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/08/premium-bond-winners-in-august-2021-is-this-the-luckiest-year-to-buy-bonds/