Premium Bonds can still win prizes even *after* you've sold them!

This is a bit niche!

A few months ago, I received a mysterious £25 from National Savings and Investments. A prize from the Premium Bonds! Not enough to make me rich, but enough for a takeaway. Oddly, after checking their app and website, I could find no record of the win. Curious.

A few days later, this letter popped through my door.

My bond was one of a tranche purchased in 2013. I sold it in 2019, yet it won in 2024!

Why was the person ineligible to win? Why had it come through to me?

This is a question lots of people have asked, with general confusion.

A letter to the Guardian in 2011 discusses what happens to a deceased prize-winner's money:

In real life a prize like this would be reallocated to the next eligible bond number.

There's a similar suggestion from an article in This is Money from 2018:

Under scheme rules, bonds can stay in the draw for up to 12 months [after the bond holder dies] and any prize can be claimed by the estate. After this, the bond is no longer eligible to win and prizes should go to the next allocated number.

So, in my case, did someone die before I cashed out in 2019? If so, why was my number chosen and why did it take so long?

I might not get answers to my specific case, but I raised a Freedom of Information request to find out what makes people ineligible, how prizes are reallocated, and how many were paid out in the last year.

This is what I found out.

Reasons why a Bond holder would be ineligible to receive a prize:

As well as death, there are two other reasons why a "winning" bond may not be eligible.

• Account in Excess – where a customer is found to be holding over their maximum Premium Bonds allowance
• Incomplete Sales – where the application is under query at the time of the draw. […] If the sale is cancelled, the investment is returned and the prize is reallocated

That all seems pretty reasonable. But how does an ineligible bond get reallocated?

Details of the reallocation process

They didn't describe the actual technical process in any detail,

[…] on making a prize ineligible, the system will automatically move prize winners up and identify any winners at the top of each prize value boundary that need a supplementary prize payment. For example, if a £1,000 prize was deemed ineligible, the system will move the top £500 prize winner up and note they are due an additional £500 prize. […] This will continue to the first eligible bond out of the draw that missed out on a prize, and they will be moved up to receive a £25 prize payment for that month.

Aha! It is possible that someone higher up the prize ladder was removed and a whole bunch of us took a step up.

I wonder how often this happens?

Last Year

I had hoped for a bit more detail, such as the total number of bonds reallocated, but I'm satisfied enough with this answer:

In the last year, the range of prizes made ineligible was £25 to £50,000. We made one £50,000 prize ineligible and this was due to being notified of the death of one of our customers[…]. In this event the move ups took place as detailed above to a £25,000 winner and then to all prize values below this.

So someone won £25k and then, a few months later, got another £25k! Lucky!

Freedom of Information is brilliant

Huge thanks to What Do They Know for providing such an excellent platform. It really made sending an FoI easy. If I ever win it big on the Premium Bonds, I'll up my donation to them!