Premium bonds: Thousands more in with chance to win – how to check the draw | Personal Finance | Finance

The winners of January’s NS&I Premium Bond prize draw are due to be announced in the coming days and this time, an extra £80million in prize money is up for grabs. NS&I increased its fund rate to three percent following December’s draw, and around 570,000 savers are expected to benefit from the hike.

NS&I Premium Bonds work as a savings account that offers account holders the chance to win extra cash, tax-free, at the start of every month through randomly generated prize draws.

Prizes are split into three value bands – higher, medium, and lower – and each band receives a percentage share of the monthly prize fund.

Prizes in the higher band range from £1million (only two of these can be won) to £5,000, while the medium and lower bands award people the chance to win between £1,000 and £500, and £100 and £25, respectively.

But after bumping the rate of the fund for the third time in one year, hundreds of thousands more premium bond savers are in with an opportunity of snapping up a prize.

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The odds of winning, however, sit at 24,500 to one for every £1 bond, but savers can increase their chances.

How to increase chances of winning Premium Bond prizes

Although winners are chosen at random, there are ways to boost the chances of winning, and this involves topping up and buying more bonds.

Bonds can be bought for £25 each and up to £50,000 can be invested in total. According to NS&I, each £1 bond number has an equal chance of winning, regardless of when or where it was bought.

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Lucky bondholders will receive a text from NS&I alerting them, after which they should see the prize money by the seventh working day of the month.

The second option is to reinvest the prize into more bonds. Those who have less than the maximum invested (£50,000) can buy more bonds to boost their chances of winning even further.

The third option is to receive a cheque for the prize through the post, but this option takes longer.

When is the next NS&I Premium Bond prize draw?

The next NS&I premium bonds prize draw will take place on January, 4.