Premium Bond savers to get £15 MILLION more in prizes

NATIONAL Sav ings & investments has raised the Premium Bond prize fund to 3.15 pc starting from its draw next week.

it’s the fourth rise in the Premium Bond prize fund since interest rates started to climb just over a year ago.

the latest increase means an extra £ 15 million paid out in prizes compared to last month, bringing the total to £314.3 million.

Some 870,000 savers will also benefit from a boost to its Direct Saver, Direct isa and income Bonds.

around 80,000 youngsters will gain from a rise in their Junior isa rate.

the rate of NS&i’s second-most popular account, Direct Saver, goes up to 2.6 pc from 2.3 pc. it’s the highest rate paid since the account was launched in March 2010.

this puts the easy-access account just behind the top payers on internetbased accounts and a top rate if you want to run the account by phone.

income Bonds, popular with pensioners because interest is paid out monthly, have also risen to 2.6 pc.

it is the highest rate since 2008. Just a year ago, it paid only 0.35 pc and a low of just 0.01 pc for the 12 months to November 2021.

its Direct isa is up to 2.15 pc from 1.75 pc, while its Junior isa rises from 2.7 pc to 3.4 pc. it’s the latest move from the Government-backed bank to hit its financing targets.

NS&i plans to bring in £6 billion, plus or minus £3 billion, in its financial year to the end of March.

at the halfway stage to the end of September, it had reached a total of £3.4 billion. But latest figures from the Bank of England show it saw £281 million leave in November, the first time it has seen an outflow since September 2021 and the largest since March that same year.

ian ackerley, NS&i chief executive, says: ‘the changes will provide a welcome boost for savers with more Premium Bond prizes and some of the highest interest rates in over a decade.’

the amount in Premium Bonds stands at nearly £ 200 billion as punters hope for a big win.

However, the odds of winning a prize remain at the current 24,000 to one.

instead, NS& i is following its strategy of cutting how many smaller prizes it pays out while raising the number of larger ones.

this time round the number of £25 prizes drops by 241,741 to 2.37 million from 2.6 million in this month’s draw. the number has plummeted from 3.5 million in December’s draw.

the largest increase for next month comes in prizes of £50 and £100, both up 121,077 to 1.28 million apiece.

the number of £500 prizes will rise to 37,719 while it will pay 605 more £1,000 prizes, a total of 12,573.

the number of £5,000 prizes will rise by 61 to 1,177 while there will be 31 extra £10,000 pay outs, up to 590.

the total of £25,000 prizes increases by 12 to 236, while there will be 117 winners of £50,000, up from 111.

the £100,000 prize rises by three to 59 while the jackpot of £1 million stays the same at two each month.