Buying Premium Bonds for a child

Any adult can buy Premium Bonds for a child under 16, and you do not have to be related to them. The Bonds are held in the child's name, but a parent or legal guardian has to be nominated as the "responsible person" who looks after them until the child's 16th birthday¹.

The child can hold up to £50,000 in Premium Bonds in total, and the minimum investment is £25¹. Every Bond is entered into the monthly prize draw, with tax-free prizes from £25 up to £1 million⁴. The prize fund rate was raised to 4.35% for the September 2026 draw, and it is variable, so it can move again³.

The money is not at risk in the way a normal savings account is. NS&I is backed by the Treasury, so every pound is guaranteed with no upper limit, and the £85,000 Financial Services Compensation Scheme cap that applies to banks and building societies does not apply here⁵.

Who can buy Premium Bonds for a child under 16

The rule is deliberately wide. Any adult can buy Premium Bonds for a child under 16, and NS&I's own guidance for children's savings names parents, legal guardians and grandparents as people who can do it¹. You do not need to be a relative, and you do not need the child's permission.

What you cannot do is keep control of the Bonds. Anyone over 16 can buy Premium Bonds for a child, but they have to nominate someone to look after the child's Bonds until the child turns 16, and that person must be a parent or guardian². NS&I calls this the responsible person, and the requirement exists because that adult has to provide evidence of identity and address for the child².

A child can have more than one responsible person linked to their account, which matters in families where, say, a grandparent buys the Bonds and a parent manages them. But the £50,000 ceiling is measured across the child's whole holding, not per adult, so a second responsible person does not create a second allowance².

Children under 16 are eligible to hold Premium Bonds, a Junior ISA and an Investment Account with NS&I². Premium Bonds are the only one of the three where the money is not pooled and invested, and the only one where the return depends on a draw rather than a rate.

The £50,000 limit on a child's Premium Bonds

A child's Premium Bonds can run from £25 up to £50,000¹. That is the same maximum holding as an adult's, and it is a hard ceiling: the child must not hold more than £50,000 of Premium Bonds in total³.

The word "total" is doing the work. Because a child can have more than one responsible person linked to their account, and because different adults may buy Bonds at different times, the limit is checked against everything held for that child rather than against each purchase². If a grandparent and a parent both buy, the two sets of Bonds count together.

Two practical points follow. First, if you are buying for a child who may already have Bonds, it is worth establishing what is already held before adding more, because a payment that takes the child over the limit cannot simply be kept. Second, the limit applies to Premium Bonds specifically, so a child's other NS&I holdings are not counted towards it.

The minimum is £25, and NS&I's product pages describe the range as £25 to £50,000¹. One NS&I page states the minimum investment as £25 while another describes the range as £25 to £50,000; the two are consistent on the floor and the ceiling, and the difference is only in how the range is worded¹.

Documents needed to buy Bonds for a child

If you are not already an NS&I customer, the parent or guardian will be asked to provide proof of their own identity and the child's, and identity documents have to be sent by post⁴. The responsible person is the one who supplies evidence of identity and address for the child, which is the reason the role has to be filled by a parent or guardian rather than whoever happens to be paying².

NS&I does not publish a single definitive list in the material here, but other savings providers show the shape of what is normally accepted for a child. The Tipton accepts a birth certificate, an adoption certificate, an NHS medical card, written confirmation from HMRC containing a National Insurance number for those aged 16 and over, Child Benefit or Child Tax Credit documentation, or a valid Student ID card from a recognised UK university showing photo and date of birth⁸.

Barclays, for a branch appointment to open a children's savings account, accepts a birth certificate, a passport even if expired, an NHS medical card, a hospital appointment letter, a European Health Insurance Card or adoption and guardianship papers⁹. Pennyburn Credit Union asks for the child's long-form birth certificate or legal paperwork, plus photo ID and proof of address for the parent or guardian opening the account¹⁰.

The pattern is consistent: a birth or adoption certificate is the document most often named, and proof of the adult's own identity and address is normally required alongside it. Requirements differ between providers, so it is worth checking before an appointment rather than turning up with the wrong paperwork.

What happens when the child turns 16

Management passes to the child on their 16th birthday. Until then, the parent or guardian named on the application looks after the Bonds, regardless of who bought them; when the child turns 16, they manage their own Bonds³. No signature or transfer form is needed for that to happen.

What does change is any instruction the adult had set up. Instructions made by a parent or guardian on behalf of children only remain in place until the child turns 16, which includes choices about how prizes are handled¹¹. After that point the child decides, including whether to cash the Bonds in.

The wider legal position supports this. A contract entered into by or on behalf of a child who is 16 or over in connection with a child trust fund has effect as if the child had been 18 or over when it was entered into¹². The same principle is written into the Junior ISA rules, where a contract entered into by a child aged 16 or over is treated as if the child had been 18 or over when the contract was entered into in specified circumstances¹³. In other words, at 16 a young person can deal with these savings directly rather than through an adult.

For closed NS&I products the same age line appears. If you held a Children's Bond and you are aged 16 or over, you can apply to have your money repaid using a simple online form; under 16, the parent or guardian who was responsible for the Bond must apply¹⁴. Some providers go further and require an adult signatory below a certain age: Saffron Building Society needs an adult signatory on the account if the child is under 13, and makes one optional between 13 and 17¹⁵.

Government backing: every pound guaranteed with no upper limit

Premium Bonds are not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, and they do not need to be. NS&I is backed by the Treasury, so the money is guaranteed in full with no upper limit, which is a different arrangement from the £85,000 FSCS limit that applies to banks and building societies⁵.

That distinction matters most for larger sums. The FSCS limit is £85,000 per person per institution, with a temporary high balance rule covering up to £1 million for six months in certain circumstances, such as money moving between property transactions⁵. A child's Premium Bonds sit outside that framework entirely, so the £50,000 ceiling is a product rule set by NS&I rather than a protection limit.

The same Treasury backing applies across NS&I's other products, which is why the maximums on those products are set well above the FSCS figure. Guaranteed Growth Bonds allow £1 million per person in each Issue, and the key features document confirms you can invest up to £1 million per person, or £1 million per trust, in each Issue of each term, with no limit if you reinvest a Bond when it matures¹⁶. Guaranteed Income Bonds are for customers aged 16 or over, and can be held in your own name or jointly with one other person¹⁸.

For a child, though, the relevant ceiling is the £50,000 Premium Bonds limit, and the relevant protection is that the capital cannot be lost to a provider failure. What it can do is fail to win: the prize fund rate is variable, and a Bond that wins nothing in a given month still holds its value but earns nothing that month³.

Complaints, fraud and where to get help

Premium Bonds complaints are relatively few but not zero. In the first quarter of 2026/27 the Financial Ombudsman Service recorded 98 complaints about Premium Bonds (NS&I only), of which 47% were upheld, alongside 58 about Savings Certificates or Bonds and 21 about with-profits Bonds¹⁹. In the same quarter a year earlier, Premium Bonds (NS&I only) complaints stood at 55²⁰.

If something goes wrong, the Ombudsman can look at a complaint brought on a child's behalf. It can help parents, guardians and others who are bringing a complaint on behalf of someone who is under 18 years old²¹. That means an adult does not have to wait until the child turns 16 to escalate a problem.

NS&I publishes its own complaints data, and it treats all Bonds held under one holder's number as a single holding for these purposes²². That is worth knowing if you are trying to work out which account a complaint relates to.

On fraud, the practical risk with a child's savings is not the Bonds themselves but anyone claiming to act for the child. NS&I's own process is built around a named responsible person precisely so that there is a single adult accountable for the account, and the requirement that the child's parent or guardian gives permission before their information is shared with NS&I is part of that⁴. If you are buying for someone else's child, that permission has to be in place first.

Free, impartial help is available. The Financial Ombudsman Service handles complaints a provider has not resolved, and NS&I's own complaints process is the first step²². For general guidance on savings and on tracing old NS&I holdings, MoneyHelper and NS&I's tracing service are the starting points, and Which? has published guidance on tracking down forgotten money⁵.