NS&I: New millionaire from Devon in May's jackpot draw

In Devon over 490,000 people hold Premium Bonds worth over £1 billion. There are over 7,900 unclaimed Premium Bond prizes in total worth over £450,000. This is the ninth time that the £1 million jackpot has been won in Devon.

In March NS&I announced that from the April prize draw onwards one of the two monthly Premium Bond jackpot prizes of £1 million will be replaced by a wider mix of other prizes in the monthly draws.

Similarly, a new £25 Premium Bonds prize has been introduced to the draws alongside the existing prizes (ranging from £50 to £1 million). These changes have been introduced because Premium Bond holders say that maintaining the chances of winning tax-free prizes on a regular basis is particularly important to them.

In May's draw ERNIE paid out over 1.1 million prizes, together amounting to more than £33 million in value. There were 40,236,307,241 eligible Bond numbers in the draw.

Premium Bond facts

The current Premium Bonds prize fund rate is 1.0% tax-free. The current odds of each £1 Bond number winning any prize are 36,000 to 1, so with average luck an investor with £30,000 in Premium Bonds could win 10 tax-free prizes a year. At the end of February 2009, over 23 million people had a total of over £40 billion invested in Premium Bonds.

Premium Bonds can be bought online at nsandi.com

Like all NS&I products, Premium Bonds offer investors 100% capital security, backed by HM Treasury, as well as the sense of fun that comes from potentially winning tax-free prizes.

Since the first Premium Bonds prize draw in 1957 over 189 million tax-free prizes worth £12 billion have been paid out. Prizes range from £25 to £1 million.

There are currently over 588,000 unclaimed Premium Bond prizes, worth over £34 million. There is no time limit for claiming prizes. Premium Bonds investors can check to see if they have won by visiting nsandi.com and using the Premium Bonds prize checker.