What happens to Premium Bonds, ISAs and other savings when you die (UK)
1 August 2026 · Inherit Vault
"Savings" sounds like one category. For inheritance purposes it's several, each with its own rules, and the differences catch almost every family off guard.
Premium Bonds
NS&I doesn't cash these in automatically, and here's the surprising part: Premium Bonds keep entering the monthly prize draw for up to a year after death, an executor can choose to leave them in as long as that window allows, or cash them in immediately. Notifying NS&I is simple, a death certificate and some ID, but the "keep them entered" option is one almost nobody knows exists unless they ask.
Cash ISAs
The tax-free wrapper doesn't survive the account holder, from the date of death, any interest earned becomes taxable, even though it sat tax-free a day earlier. A surviving spouse or civil partner can claim an "additional permitted subscription", broadly equal to the ISA's value at death, letting that same amount go back into their own ISA tax-free. Anyone else inheriting an ISA doesn't get this, the tax-free status simply ends.
Stocks and shares ISAs
Similar principle, the ISA wrapper stops applying to gains from the date of death, and the investments themselves need to be valued for probate just like any other asset, at market value on that date, not whatever they were bought for.
Premium Bonds and ISAs both sit outside the will's control in one specific sense, they don't need probate to identify who they belong to, that's already fixed, but they do need probate before the executor can actually access or cash them in for most estates above the small-estates threshold.
The common thread
None of these products send a letter when the holder dies, they wait to be told, sometimes for years, which is exactly how so much of the UK's billions in unclaimed savings ends up unclaimed: not hidden, just never reported. A one-line note, "I hold £X in Premium Bonds, provider Y", costs nothing to write and can be the only reason it's ever found at all.
Leave your family a map, not a mystery.
Inherit Vault is the UK's digital inheritance vault: every account, policy, and instruction your family will need, encrypted so only you can read it, released to your executor when it genuinely matters.
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