If you own Premium Bonds and have been checking your account every few weeks hoping for a big win, it might be time to reset your expectations.
New research from Octopus Money reveals that most people wait far longer than they think to actually win anything at all, and millions of pounds in prizes are still sitting unclaimed. Here’s what the numbers actually show, and why checking your account regularly is important if you don’t want to miss out on some potentially big money.
Most new bond holders expect to win far sooner than they actually do.
Analysis from Octopus Money found that people opening a Premium Bonds account typically wait three and a half years on average before winning their first prize. Yet, around a third of new bondholders expected to win within just six months of opening their account.
Of the 510,061 accounts opened during the 2025-26 financial year, more than 60% hadn’t won a single prize by the end of that same financial year. That’s a substantial gap between what people expect and what actually tends to happen.
Premium Bonds remain the UK’s most popular savings product.
Run by the Treasury backed National Savings and Investments, Premium Bonds are currently held by around 22.5 million people across the country. Each individual bond costs £1 and gets entered into a monthly prize draw, with tax-free prizes ranging from £25 right up to a full £1 million.
Savers can hold up to £50,000 in Premium Bonds at any one time. Unlike a traditional savings account, they don’t earn regular interest, instead relying entirely on this monthly prize draw system for any potential return.
The advertised prize rate doesn’t work quite like normal interest.
Premium Bonds currently advertise a prize rate of three point eight percent, designed to give savers a general sense of the average return they might expect. This figure often gets mistaken for something closer to a guaranteed interest rate, but it doesn’t actually work that way at all.
Some bondholders will win considerably more than that average rate suggests over time, while a large number of people will win nothing whatsoever. The prize rate is simply an overall average across every single bondholder, not a personal guarantee for any individual account.
Millions of pounds in prizes remain unclaimed.
Perhaps the most striking finding from this research is just how much prize money is currently sitting unclaimed. Octopus Money identified 2.7 million unclaimed prizes, worth a combined £129.9 million, simply waiting for the right person to come forward.
Even more strikingly, £6.3 billion is currently sitting in Premium Bonds accounts that haven’t seen a single deposit, withdrawal or updated contact detail in an entire decade. This suggests a huge number of people may have forgotten they own any bonds at all.
Forgetting to check in can cost you money.
According to Tom Francis from Octopus Money, the core issue is straightforward: if you’re not regularly checking your account, you risk missing prizes entirely, and you’re also less likely to be comparing your Premium Bonds against other savings options available elsewhere. This lack of regular engagement can quietly cost people money without them ever realising it.
Francis specifically pointed out the confusion around the prize rate, noting that while it might sound similar to a normal interest rate, it functions differently. Some savers will beat that figure by a wide margin, while others will simply never win anything at all over the same period.
NS&I has faced serious problems of its own recently.
These findings arrive shortly after a crisis at NS&I back in March, which ultimately led to the resignation of chief executive Dax Harkins. The organisation admitted an operational failure meant thousands of people were never paid out a combined total of more than £470 million from accounts belonging to deceased relatives.
NS&I says these outstanding payments are expected to be completed by the end of June 2027, with compensation included and any usual income tax on savings interest waived entirely for those affected. It’s a huge admission of failure from an organisation many people trust with their savings precisely because it’s government-backed.
A separate digital overhaul has also run badly over budget.
NS&I has faced further criticism over a botched £3 billion digital modernisation project, known internally as Project Rainbow. Launched back in 2020 with the goal of cutting running costs and updating outdated IT systems, the project is now at least £1.3 billion over its original budget.
Its original deadline has also been pushed back by four full years, now not expected to complete until 2028. A damning report from the public accounts committee placed blame on NS&I’s management at the time, including Harkins, for fostering what it described as a good news culture that discouraged staff from admitting problems or resolving disagreements internally.
NS&I insists every bond remains eligible regardless of activity.
Responding to these findings, an NS&I spokesperson said the organisation has paid out over £25 billion across more than 497 million prizes over the past decade. They confirmed that every individual Premium Bonds holding stays eligible for the monthly prize draw, regardless of whether the account holder has made any additional deposits or withdrawals.
The spokesperson described Premium Bonds as a fun, tax-free way to save, with every deposit fully protected under the 100% government guarantee. This month alone, they noted, saw over 6.2 million tax-free prizes awarded, worth a combined total of more than £433 million.
If you hold Premium Bonds, keep your eye on the prize (literally).
Given how much unclaimed prize money is currently sitting untouched, it’s a sensible habit to log into your account every so often and check whether you’ve won anything recently. Since prizes don’t get paid out automatically without you checking, money owed to you could easily sit unclaimed for years without your knowledge.
It’s also worth remembering that the advertised prize rate reflects an average across millions of bondholders, not a guaranteed personal return. If steady, predictable growth matters more to you than the chance of a big win, comparing Premium Bonds against other savings accounts occasionally could help you decide whether they still make sense for your own savings goals.
