What happens to your NS&I savings when you die? (UK)

18 August 2026 · Inherit Vault

Premium Bonds are the famous one, and they've got a rule of their own: the bonds stay in the monthly draw for twelve months after death, and any prizes are held for the estate. The rest of the NS&I range doesn't work like that at all.

One form covers the lot

Income Bonds, Direct Saver, Guaranteed Growth and Income Bonds, Direct ISA, Green Savings Bonds, old index-linked certificates: they're all dealt with through a single NS&I bereavement claim, with a death certificate and the details of whoever is sorting the estate. You don't need a separate process per product, which makes NS&I one of the easier institutions to deal with. Interest carries on being earned in the meantime, so nothing is lost by taking a few weeks over it.

You may not need probate at all

NS&I will usually pay out holdings up to £5,000 without a grant of probate, on a signed claim form. Above that they'll want the grant like everyone else. Check the total before assuming the estate needs a full probate application. For a lot of families NS&I is the largest single holding, and the amount decides the route.

The certificates that keep going

Index-linked and fixed-interest savings certificates don't automatically cash in on death. They can be left to run to the end of their term. Some carry old index-linked rates that are far better than anything on sale today. Cashing one in early, just to be tidy, is an expensive sort of tidy. Ask what the certificate is actually paying before you close it.

Tax splits at the date of death

Interest earned up to the day someone dies belongs on their final tax return. Anything after that is estate income, and it's the executor's job to report it. NS&I will send the figures split that way if you ask, which saves a lot of squinting at statements.

And the forgotten ones

NS&I runs a free tracing service called My Lost Account. It searches decades of holdings, including certificates bought in the 1970s and 80s by parents and grandparents. Millions of pounds sit unclaimed in exactly this way. It costs nothing to search and it's the single best hour an executor can spend if they suspect there's an old certificate somewhere.

Most NS&I money goes missing for a very boring reason: it doesn't produce statements anyone reads, and it isn't attached to a bank someone would think to phone. A one-line note that it exists does more than any amount of tracing afterwards.

Leave your family a map, not a mystery.

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