NS&I (National Savings & Investments) has announced the winners from the December prize draw, which includes two jackpot winners.
The NS&I Premium Bond jackpot winners come from Wandsworth and the Scottish Highlands – if you live there and hold Premium Bonds, you could be in for an early Christmas treat.
The first winning bond number is 414XW486235 and belongs to someone in the Scottish Highlands. The winner holds £45,000 in Premium Bonds and purchased the winning bond in September 2020.
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The second winning bond number is 150FZ477948 and belongs to someone in Wandsworth. The winner holds £29,042 in Premium Bonds and purchased the winning bond in August 2009.
The two jackpot winners will have been visited by NS&I’s “Agent Million”, who gave the news about the win in person.
If you didn’t win the jackpot, then you could still be a winner of some sort with a total of 4.9 million prizes being released this month, ranging from as little as £25 to as much as £100,000. The total value of the December Premium Bond prizes was £219m. You can check if you are a winner from 2 December - we explain below how to check.
The number of prizes given out each month was raised in October, meaning that the odds of winning has improved to 24,000 to one. Earlier this year, NS&I also increased the interest rate on its savings products to entice more savers in.
December NS&I Premium Bond winners: the breakdown of the prizes
Here are the prizes picked by the NS&I’s Ernie – the machine that generates the winning numbers.
| Value of prize | Number of prizes |
| £1,000,000 | 2 |
| £100,000 | 18 |
| £50,000 | 36 |
| £25,000 | 71 |
| £10,000 | 178 |
| £5,000 | 359 |
| £1,000 | 4,379 |
| £500 | 13,137 |
| £100 | 731,225 |
| £50 | 731,225 |
| £25 | 3,496,500 |
Around £80m in Premium Bond prizes are currently sitting unclaimed, so it is worth checking if you are a winner – not just for the December draw but also for any previous months or years. See our article on the November Premium Bond prize draw.
How to check if you are a Premium Bond winner
It’s easy to check if you are a NS&I Premium Bond winner. December winners can check on 2 December. Here are all the ways to check:
- Use the prize checker feature on the NS&I website
- Download NS&I’s prize checker app onto your smartphone
- Ask Alexa. You can even state your NS&I number to a device that has Amazon’s Alexa service enabled, and check if you’re a lucky winner.
- If you have registered online with NS&I then you will be sent an email – so check your inbox/spam folder. However, if you haven’t done so then you’ll instead be sent a letter.
Make sure NS&I has the correct contact details – not updating your details could result in you missing out on any notifications and unclaimed prizes.
Premium Bonds vs savings accounts
The return you get from Premium Bonds will come down to how lucky you are. The NS&I says there’s a one in 24,000 chance of one bond winning a prize a month. Essentially, the more you hold and the greater the value, the higher your chance of winning, but calculating the real probability of you winning a decent prize is complicated.
If you’re looking for a more reliable return on your money, you might want instead to use a traditional savings account, with some banks offering as much as 5% interest.
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