June’s Premium Bonds draw was set for Monday 1 June, with the results due to be released by NS&I on Tuesday 2 June. For the millions of savers who hold the government-backed bonds, that meant a fresh chance to see whether their numbers had landed one of the monthly cash prizes ranging from £25 to £1 million.
The draw matters because Premium Bonds are not a niche product. Around 24 million people take part, with more than £127bn banked in the scheme, and two millionaires are made at every draw. For anyone checking the premium bond prize checker, that is the difference between an ordinary month and a life-changing one.
Savers can check the results on NS&I’s website by entering their bond numbers into its checker, and there is also an NS&I app for checking on the go. Premium Bonds are an investment product from the National Savings and Investment scheme, which is owned by the government, and they do not accrue interest in the way a regular bank account does.
Instead, each £1 entered is put into a random monthly draw run through a digital prize picker called Ernie, with odds of 22,000-to-one for every £1 invested. The minimum holding is £25 and the maximum is £50,000, which means some savers have a much bigger stake in the monthly draw than others do. That is also why the returns can look better on paper than they do in practice.
Martin Lewis has said the 'interest rate' on Premium Bonds accounts is 4 per cent when all winnings are counted, but he has also pointed out that most people will not see anything like that. The line matters because it cuts through the appeal of the scheme: the headline prize pool is real, but the experience for most holders is still a long wait for a prize that may never come.
The June results were due a day after the draw, and that left bondholders with one clear task: check their numbers once NS&I published them. Which bond numbers won the biggest prizes was not immediately available in the details provided, but the next step was simple enough for anyone holding Premium Bonds — use the checker, and see whether June had been their month.
