Unclaimed Premium Bonds: how to check and claim, decades later (UK)

1 September 2026 · Inherit Vault

There's no deadline on a Premium Bonds prize. NS&I holds onto it until you get in touch, whether that's next Tuesday or in thirty years' time. The money doesn't expire. The letter telling you about it just went to a house you moved out of in 1994.

Why prizes go unclaimed at all

NS&I contacts everyone who wins. The trouble is where it sends the news. You move and don't tell them. You marry and change your name. The letter goes astray. Around 9 in 10 prizes now go straight into a bank account or get reinvested into more Bonds. The rest still leave as a cheque in the post. A cheque sent to an address you left decades ago is exactly how a prize becomes an unclaimed one.

There is no time limit, and that's official

NS&I's own guidance is blunt about it. You never need to worry about an unclaimed prize, because they hold on to it until you get in touch. There's no time limit on making a claim. The Bonds work the same way. If you never cashed them in, they're still valid and still going into the monthly draw. A packet of Bonds an aunt bought you in 1978 is in this month's draw whether you remember it or not.

Step one: find your holder's number

All your Bonds sit under a single holder's number. It's 10 or 9 digits, or 8 digits followed by a letter, printed on your Bond record. If you're registered for NS&I's online service, log in and read it off your Premium Bonds account page. Lost the paperwork entirely? Call NS&I for a replacement Bond record, or write and ask for one. That record lists every Bond you hold.

Step two: run the prize checker

With the holder's number in hand, the checker on nsandi.com will tell you whether anything is sitting there waiting. There's also a prize checker app on the App Store and Google Play. If you'd rather ask out loud, there's an Alexa skill for it. Logging in shows your full prize history. No internet? Write and ask for your prize history, and they'll post you the list.

Step three: if you're not sure the Bonds exist at all

That's the more common problem, and NS&I runs a free Tracing Service. Do it online, print a form, or write to Tracing Service, NS&I, Sunderland SR43 2SB. Give your full name, current address, the address you lived at when you invested, and any other previous addresses. Add any previous names, roughly when you opened the account and roughly how much you put in. Sign and date it. NS&I aims to confirm any accounts or investments within a month, longer when they're busy. It costs nothing. If a firm offers to find your Bonds for a percentage, they're charging you for a form.

My Lost Account covers NS&I too

Not sure if it's NS&I or an old building society? Do one search instead of five. My Lost Account is the free joint service run with UK Finance and the Building Societies Association, and NS&I is one of the providers it searches. Pensions have their own equivalent, worth running at the same time while you've got the old addresses to hand.

How the money actually reaches you

A quirk worth knowing. Write in about an unclaimed prize and it comes to your home address as a warrant. NS&I is explicit that it can't pay unclaimed prizes into a bank account. Your letter needs the holder's number, your current and previous names, your current and previous addresses, and your signature. Once you're registered online or by phone, you can switch future prizes to your bank or have them reinvested. You get a text or email when you win. That's how you stop this happening again.

Claiming for someone who has died

Different route entirely: a bereavement claim, which you can start online without creating an account. You'll need the person's full name, address, date of birth, and date and place of death. Then previous names and addresses, the executors' names, the account types, and bank details for the payout. NS&I is currently quoting around eight weeks for a bereavement enquiry rather than its usual 14 days. It also admitted in 2026 that some estates had been underpaid, because its search process missed accounts. It began writing to affected estates from 27 May 2026 and expects to finish in 2027. The wider picture on Bonds, ISAs and the rest of the range is covered here. One rule catches people out: you can only ask for a trace on someone else's behalf if you're legally entitled to, as an attorney or an executor.

What you might actually be sitting on

Prizes run from £25 to £1 million, all tax free. Two £1 million jackpots go out every month. From the September 2026 draw the prize fund rate is 4.35%, up from 3.80%, and the odds shortened to 21,000 to 1 for every £1 Bond. That draw was estimated at over 6.5 million prizes worth more than £497 million. You can hold up to £50,000, and anything above the limit isn't eligible to win.

None of this is difficult. It's just that nobody does it, because nobody remembers the Bonds are there. That's the real failure, not NS&I's post room. So once you've dug out the holder's number, make sure it never goes missing again. Write it down somewhere your family will actually find it, next to the accounts, the pensions and the policies. A plain record of where things are, rather than a pile of passwords, is what stops a prize sitting in Sunderland for thirty years waiting for someone to ask.

Leave your family a map, not a mystery.

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