Over 100,000 Premium Bond prizes worth £3.7 million remain unclaimed in Wales, new figures reveal, as critics say the government-owned bank is not doing enough to reunite winners with their money.
The data, released by National Savings and Investments following a Freedom of Information request, shows that 100,861 prizes have gone unclaimed across Wales as of March 2025. Among these is a £25,000 winner whose bond number is 005AS653995, won in a draw in May 2013.
Welsh Premium Bond holders collectively own more than one million accounts worth £5.3 billion, representing 4.6 per cent of all Premium Bond accounts across the UK. Nearly 23 million people hold Premium Bonds worth a combined £130 billion nationwide.
The data shows Wales had a relatively active Premium Bond market in the 2024-25 financial year, with 131,680 accounts making new purchases worth £881 million. Welsh bond holders won 2.9 million prizes worth £219 million during that period, including 171,059 prizes won on bonds purchased in the same year.
The unclaimed Welsh prizes form part of a wider issue across the UK, where more than £100 million in prizes remain unpaid to winners. Across the UK, 2.5 million prizes totalling £103 million have not been claimed, including 11 winners of £100,000 prizes.
Wills and probate solicitor Patrice Lawrence, who has helped seven people trace Premium Bond accounts, described the situation as “shocking that a government-owned bank is sitting on over £100m in unclaimed prizes” and questioned “how many people are being deprived of some financial respite from the cost of living crisis as a result?”
The Welsh figures also reveal significant numbers of dormant accounts. Some 668,572 Premium Bond accounts in Wales have had no activity for more than 20 years, representing a value of £40 million. These dormant holdings account for nearly two-thirds of all Welsh Premium Bond accounts.
The oldest unclaimed Welsh prize dates back to February 1962, a £25 win on bond number 000PN241800, highlighting how some prizes have remained unclaimed for more than six decades.
Despite the scale of unclaimed money, NS&I retail director Andrew Westhead said the organisation had “successfully paid out over 99% of all Premium Bonds prizes to our winners since 1957.” He added that the £103 million of prizes currently unclaimed represents “just 0.28% of the total £37bn awarded by ERNIE over nearly seven decades.”
NS&I operates a tracing service for people who have lost track of their bonds. The organisation said it had been asked to carry out 781,576 traces as of March 2025, of which 465,048 were successful and 443,806 accounts were found to have value, representing a success rate of around 60 per cent.
People trying to trace lost Premium Bonds can contact NS&I’s tracing service online, by post or phone, even if they don’t have their original bond numbers. The service can also be used by executors of wills or those with power of attorney acting on someone else’s behalf.
However, critics argue the process needs reform. Patrice Lawrence has started a petition calling for changes to make it easier to trace accounts using basic information such as names, dates of birth and addresses at the time of purchase. She highlighted particular difficulties for people who were gifted bonds as children but never told about them, and for those dealing with paper certificates that only show holder numbers without identifying the bond owner.
Consumer group Which? suggested NS&I could “make the process smoother” by joining government death notification services to automatically update records when bond holders die.
NS&I encourages Premium Bond holders to register their contact details and opt for prizes to be paid directly into bank accounts rather than by cheque, which reduces the risk of prizes going unclaimed. Currently, nine out of ten prizes are paid directly to bank accounts, but customers who bought bonds before digital registration became standard may still receive cheques by post.
(FOI data from the BBC Shared Data Unit / above – Wrexham.com)
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