How to claim unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes

There is £123,537,625 in Premium Bonds prizes that nobody has claimed, spread across 2,817,080 individual prizes, according to the latest NS&I data¹. The money is not lost. It sits with NS&I, the UK government savings bank, waiting for the bondholder to come forward².

Premium Bonds do not pay interest. Instead, each £1 Bond you hold is entered into a monthly prize draw, with prizes ranging from £25 to £1 million, and the prizes are tax-free³. A prize is only paid once NS&I knows where to send it, and that is where most unclaimed money comes from: bonds bought decades ago, bonds registered to an address the holder has since left, or bonds bought for a child and never transferred into the child's own name.

Checking takes minutes and costs nothing. The prize checker shows any prizes won this month, anything won in the previous six draws, and any older unclaimed prizes². If you have chosen to have prizes paid into a bank account or reinvested, NS&I also lets you know by text or email when you win².

Unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes: over £123 million waiting

The £123,537,625 figure is the total value of prizes drawn but never collected, and the 2,817,080 figure is how many separate prizes make up that total¹. Prizes accumulate for ordinary reasons. A bondholder moves house and forgets to tell NS&I. A grandparent buys bonds for a child and the paperwork stays with the grandparent. Someone dies and the family does not know the bonds exist.

Premium Bonds are not the only forgotten money in the system. Child Trust Funds hold nearly £1.4bn of unclaimed cash, a jump from £1bn the previous financial year⁹. Unclaimed pension savings come to £31.1bn across 3.3m pots, according to the Pensions Policy Institute¹. An estimated £23 billion of benefits and social tariffs in the UK goes unclaimed⁴.

The important point for Premium Bonds specifically is that a bond does not expire. As long as you have not cashed in the bonds, they stay valid and keep being entered into the prize draws each month¹⁰. A prize won in 1998 is still payable today. Nothing is forfeited by waiting, but nothing is paid until a claim is made either.

If you are not sure whether you hold bonds at all, the starting point is tracing the holding itself rather than the prize. NS&I can search its records, and there is a separate process for tracing lost NS&I savings and Premium Bonds. Once the holding is confirmed, the prize checker will show anything outstanding against it.

Proving who you are: the documents NS&I asks for

NS&I is required by law to check your identity and address when you apply to invest with it or register for its online and phone service, and possibly at other times to keep its records updated¹¹. A prize claim on an old bond often triggers that check, because the record may not have been touched in years.

For savers aged 18 and over living in the UK, NS&I asks for two different documents: one from List A, which is evidence of your identity, and one from List B, which is evidence of your address¹¹. Both must match the name and address on the NS&I application and show the issuing organisation's name and contact details¹¹.

Savers who live outside the UK send the same two-document combination, one from each list¹¹. Accepted identity documents include a passport copy, a certified national identity card, a certified passport card, a certified overseas driving licence showing an address, and a certified bank statement issued within the last three months¹¹. If the document type is not obvious, NS&I may ask for a certified translation into English¹¹.

Savers aged 16 or 17 who live outside the UK need only one document: a certified copy of a birth certificate, or a copy of a passport¹¹.

Bonds bought for you as a child or held under more than one number

Any adult can buy Premium Bonds for a child under 16¹². The child's parent or guardian must be happy to look after the investment for the child until the child turns 16⁵. Anyone over 16 can buy Premium Bonds for a child, but will need to nominate someone to look after the child's Bonds until they turn 16, and that person must be a parent or guardian¹³. That nominated person will need to provide evidence of identity and address for the child¹³.

This is the single most common source of unclaimed prizes. The bonds are registered in the adult's name, the prizes are drawn against the bond numbers, and the child may reach adulthood with no idea the holding exists. If you think bonds were bought for you as a child, the adult who bought them, or the parent or guardian who looked after them, is the person who can confirm the holding and its bond numbers.

Each £1 Bond you buy has its own Bond number, and it is this number that is entered into the monthly draw⁵. A holding bought in several instalments over years can therefore sit under many bond numbers, and a prize can be attached to any one of them. When you check, you are checking the whole holding, not a single number.

There is a separate trap for larger holdings. Any Premium Bond numbers that go over the £50,000 limit are not eligible to win prizes, and if a number beyond the limit is drawn and a prize paid in error, NS&I has the right to reclaim it³. If bonds were bought for a child over many years and the total has crept past the limit, part of the holding may not be earning entries at all. The rules on how much you can hold in Premium Bonds set out where the limit falls.

Contacting NS&I to claim: by post or on 08085 007 007

Most prizes are paid automatically. The exception is the largest ones: if you win £25,000, £50,000 or £100,000, NS&I sends you a claim form, which you must complete and send back before the prize can be paid³. That form is the trigger for the identity checks described above.

For written account administration, NS&I's postal address is NS&I, Sunderland SR43 2SB⁸. That address is used for requests such as merging accounts, which need a signed letter⁸. For a prize claim, use the address and instructions printed on the claim form NS&I sends you rather than posting documents unprompted.

By phone, NS&I's customer service line is 0800 092 1286, free from the UK¹⁴. You can also use the contact form at nsandi.com/contact-us-email, or write to the Customer Care Team¹⁴. If you are complaining rather than claiming, the same three routes apply⁷.

Backed by HM Treasury, with no stated limit

NS&I is the UK government savings bank, and it is backed by HM Treasury, the government's economic and finance ministry⁷. That backing is different in kind from the protection a bank or building society offers. Deposit protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme has a limit per person per institution; NS&I's Treasury backing has no stated limit⁷.

The practical limit on Premium Bonds is not protection but eligibility. You can hold up to £50,000 worth of Premium Bonds⁵. The minimum purchase is £25, in whole-pound amounts⁶. Prizes are tax-free, and the holding limit itself is described as a £50,000 tax-free holding limit¹⁶.

One consequence of the Treasury backing is worth knowing for estate planning. NS&I's Premium Bonds cannot be passed on: instead they must be cashed out by the executor, or left for another 12 months on the death of the holder¹⁷. That is a different rule from ordinary investments, and it means a holding can sit unclaimed in an estate for a year before anything happens to it.

NS&I also offers other accounts, including a cash ISA with a variable interest rate called a Direct ISA, and a Junior ISA which is a cash ISA¹⁸. It does not offer a flexible ISA, and it does not offer a stocks and shares Junior ISA¹⁸. The wider range is set out in NS&I accounts and bonds: how they work and Treasury backing.

Complaints and where to get help

If a claim goes wrong, the first step is NS&I's own complaints process: call 0800 092 1286, use the contact form at nsandi.com/contact-us-email, or write to the Customer Care Team⁷. If the complaint is not resolved, it can be referred free of charge to the Financial Ombudsman Service on 0800 023 4567 or 0300 123 9123¹⁴.

The ombudsman publishes complaint data by firm and product. In the first quarter of 2026/27 it opened 98 complaints about NS&I Premium Bonds and upheld 47% of them¹⁹. That upheld rate is high by the standards of the table it sits in, which also lists 130 complaints about BNPL loans, 126 about business loans not secured on land, and 21 about with-profits bonds¹⁹.

For free, impartial help with money problems more broadly, including where savings sit alongside debts, debt advice charities such as StepChange offer guidance in Scotland⁴. If a prize claim is tangled up with an estate, the executor handles the cashing out, and the 12-month rule above applies¹⁷.