Premium Bonds: Exact amount you need to win £1m jackpot and it’s less than you think | Personal Finance | Finance
Attempting to bag a £1 million windfall from a win on the Premium Bonds may not be as far out of reach as many believe.
The statistics show that for every £1 bond you hold, in any one month, you have a one in 59,082,205,208 chance of claiming one of the two top prizes.
It has been widely assumed that such riches are only available to those who can afford to be investing the maximum possible sum of £50,000.
The maths means that – in simple terms – the more bonds that an individual holds then the greater chance they have of claiming any prize including the jackpot.
However, a new analysis looking at the past 50 Premium Bond draws and their winners dating back to May 2020 found you do not need to own the maximum holding of £50,000 to bag one of the two £1 million prizes available each month.
In fact, the figures show that the average holding of a £1 million winner was £38,779. This compares to the average Premium Bond holding of £5,250.
Just 38 of the 100 newly made millionaires held the maximum £50,000 in Premium Bonds.
And the smallest holding of a £1 million prize winner over the past 50 draws was just £1,001 by a saver in Devon in August 2021.
The smallest holding ever to land the jackpot was £17 in July 2004 and this winner was based in Newham, east London.
In last month’s draw, a Premium Bond holder won a £1 million jackpot prize with £10,575 and since May 2020 six Premium Bonds holders have won the top prize with £10,000 or less.
The results of the most-recent draw on Monday show the two million-pound winners this month both held the maximum stake.
Coincidently, one lives in Surrey – home of the constituency of Chancellor Jeremy Hunt – and the other in Rishi Sunak’s native Southampton.
Anna Bowes, co-founder of website Savings Champion, said she was surprised that the average holding of Premium Bond £1 million prize winners is not higher than £38,779.
“It illustrates the random nature of who might win prizes. But if you go in with £38,000 thinking you are more likely to win a £1 million prize, expect to be disappointed – the odds are still very long,” she said.
Currently, the underlying rate – or the average prize payout per year – on Premium Bonds is 4.4 per cent with the odds of any £1 bond winning any prize sitting at 21,000 to 1.
The research, conducted by Money Mail, also looked at the figures for £100,000 and £50,000 prize winners – with similar results.
Of the 1,639 winners of £100,000 over the past 50 draws, the average holding was £38,745. Of these, 774 or 47 per cent held the maximum £50,000 holding.
Of the 3,270 winners of £50,000 prizes, the typical sum held is £38,741 and 48 per cent held the maximum holding. And just this week, four Premium Bonds holders collected £100,000 and £50,000 prizes with holdings under £1,000.
They included a saver in West Yorkshire who won £100,000 with just £300 in Premium Bonds, from a bond purchased only seven months ago – the equivalent of a 33,233 percent return.
Sales of Premium Bonds have leapt by 44 per cent over the past four years as prize levels have risen.
There were 124.1 billion bond numbers eligible for the June draw – up from 120 billion this time last year and 86.1 billion in March 2020.
A total of 5.9 million prizes worth more than £455 million were paid out to Premium Bonds holders this week in June’s draw, up from 3.5 million prizes in March 2020.
Andrew Hagger, personal finance expert of MoneyComms, told Money Mail: “Many people realise their chance of a £1 million jackpot is pretty slim but there are 3,220 prizes available each month with a value of between £5,000 and £100,000 – for that reason, there’s always a chance of a decent prize.”
The £1 million prize was introduced in April 1994. Since 2005, there have been two £1 million jackpots each month – excluding a few special one-off draws.
Premium Bonds are provided by National Savings and Investments (NS&I). Every £1 that you invest is given a unique number, and all of these are put into a random draw every month with the chance of winning.
