If you didn’t win the £1 million jackpot, you could still bag a prize worth between £25 and £100,000 with the government-backed savings provider. Plus, in recent months, the number of prizes on offer has risen.
With a record number of prizes available, you may have a greater chance of winning; in September, the prize fund increased from 4% to 4.65% and the odds of winning improved from 22,000 to 1 to 21,000 to 1, which added more than £65 million to the prize pot.
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While the jackpot winners get a visit from Agent Million, other prize winners need to check for themselves, and unless you opted to have your money reinvested, it will remain as an unclaimed prize.
According to NS&I, ERNIE (NS&I's prize draw machine) has drawn 660.4 million prizes with a total value of £28.7 billion, since the first draw in June 1957.
How to check your winnings in the December prize draw
There are several ways you can check what you have won in the December Premium Bonds prize draw.
You can go onto the NS&I website and use their prize checker tool. For this, you will need your NS&I number to hand.
Alternatively, you can download the NS&I app on your phone (available on Android or iOS), for which you will need your Premium Bond Holder number.
You can even use Alexa to find out winning from the latest prize draw. You can set this up, you will need to use the Alexa app and activate the NS&I Premium Bonds prize checker skill and enter your NS&I number.
Alexa notifies you on everything from how much you’ve won, plus any details on upcoming draws. Your Alexa will also tell you any prizes that you haven’t claimed since July 1968.
But, in November there were 2,318,130 unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes.
How to check for unclaimed Premium Bond prizes
NS&I’s latest data shows that from the two jackpot locations in December’s draw, York and Essex, there are thousands of unclaimed Premium Bond prizes.
There are currently 7,827 prizes worth £226,900 yet to be claimed in York and 55,559 unclaimed prizes worth £226,900 waiting to be claimed.
The oldest unclaimed prize dates all the way back to the February 1964 draw, worth £25.
To check for unclaimed prizes, you can call NS&I for free on08085 007 007 if you are registered for online or phone services.
If you aren’t registered, you can write a letter to NS&I. To speed up the process, you should include the following information:
Your current name
Premium Bonds holder's number
Any previous names
Your current address
Any previous addresses where Bonds may have been registered
Your signature
The letter can be sent to: NS&I, Sunderland, SR43 2SB.
Any backdated prizes that you claim will be posted directly to your home address.
December 2023 Premium Bond winners
Here’s a breakdown of the December 2023 winnings.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Value of prize
Number of prizes
£1,000,000
2
£100,000
91
£50,000
181
£25,000
362
£10,000
907
£5,000
1,815
£1,000
18,936
£500
56,808
£100
2,352,736
£50
2,352,736
£25
1,033,271
Total value of prizes: £473,427,175
5,817,845
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Vaishali has a background in personal finance and a passion for helping people manage their finances. As a former staff writer for MoneyWeek, Vaishali covered the latest news, trends and insights on property, savings and ISAs.
She also has bylines for the U.S. personal finance site Kiplinger.com and Ideal Home, GoodTo, inews, The Week and the Leicester Mercury.
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