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<p>National Savings and Investment (NS&I) consider a prize as unclaimed when it has not been paid or cashed in to the bond holder within 18 months of the prize being issued. NS&I proactively encourage customers to find funds and accounts they have lost track of. They do this in a number of ways, including regular media campaigns and their continued support for the My Lost Account service.</p><p> </p><p>Since the first prize draw in July 1957, 364 million prizes have been awarded with a total value of £17.2 billion. To date, there are 1,353,438 unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes worth a total of £55.2 million, just over 0.3% of total prizes awarded.</p><p> </p><p>The legislation under which Premium Bonds are offered states that Premium Bonds can only be purchased or held by an individual.</p><p> </p><p>Changing this legislation to allow charities, clubs and societies to purchase Premium Bonds would have significant operational implications for NS&I. It would require systems to be put in place to allow multiple authorised signatories to each account and ensure that any instructions received come from authorised individuals. This would result in a large operational cost relative to the likely scale of deposits, and would therefore not be cost-effective for the taxpayer.</p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p> |