NS&I has explained for savers how they can invest in more Premium Bonds when the website is not working.
Twitter user Lola Chapell (Lolajaechaps) contacted the group as she wanted to buy more Bonds but she couldn’t log into her account online as the website was down.
The provider said their technical team was looking into the issue with the website and then said she could buy more Bonds using a BACS transfer.
NS&I then said she would need to provide these details to do a BACS transfer:
- Reference
- Premium Bonds holder’s number – with no hyphens, spaces or full stops
- Payee name
- NS&I Premium Bonds sort code
- Account number
- Type of account.
A person can also set up a standing order to regularly buy Premium Bonds. When buying Bonds, a saver has to buy at least £25 worth.
People with Premium Bonds go into a monthly prize draw rather than getting an interest rate on their savings, with each £1 Bond having an equal chance of winning.
Prizes each month include two jackpot prizes for £1million and several large cash prizes for £100,000 and £50,000.
A customer can hold up to £50,000 in Premium Bonds and the more Bonds a person has, the better their chance of winning.
From the September draw, the prize fund rate increased from four percent to 4.65 percent. This means the chance of a Bond winning a prize is now at 21,000 to one.
Another person recently asked NS&I why so many prizes seem to go to people who live on the western side of England.
Twitter user @gpmailbox asked: “It seems that almost all higher value #PremiumBond prizes go to western side (North-West-South) of England. Are you using dummy bond numbers too to keep the odds of winning steady?”
The group said in response: “There couldn’t be any based on how the draw works. ERNIE generates numbers and numbers and we match the numbers to numbers held by customers, therefore “dummy numbers” cannot be entered into the draw.”
Each winning number is chosen at random to ensure each Bond has an equal chance of winning.
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