Happy birthday Premium Bonds!

01 November 2016

It has been 60 years since Premium Bonds were launched as a savings product in the UK. Since then 355 million people have won money totaling £17bn through Premium Bonds, with 350 lucky savers becoming instant millionaires!

The bonds, which are purchased for a minimum of £100, don’t pay a regular dividend – instead, all of the interest accrued on the value of the bonds is put into a prize fund, with lucky winners of a monthly lottery scooping prizes of up to £1m.

The bonds are operated by the Treasury and are currently earning interest of 1.25%, which is much higher than that of many other savings products, including ISAs, and from Sunday, the maximum sum any one person can invest rises to £40,000.

Don’t get too excited just yet though – the odds of ERNIE picking a single bond as a winner is 1 in 26,000!