ERNIE makes his 300th millionaire
Through his four generations ERNIE has been allocating prizes since 1957 and making millionaires since 1994. This month NS&I paid its 300th £1 million jackpot prize.
The winner from Surrey
- A male living in Surrey
- Bond number: 218BB905048
- Winning Bond bought in February 2014
- Total holdings: £29,175
The winner from Coventry
- A male living in Coventry
- Bond number: 116HA600049
- Winning Bond bought in October 2006
- Total holdings: £40,000
For the October 2014 draw, ERNIE paid out over 1.9 million prizes, together amounting to over £57 million in value. There were 50,853,247,424 eligible Bond numbers in the draw.
This brings the grand total of prizes since the first draw in June 1957, to 302 million and the value of those prizes to £15.4 billion.
Prize and value breakdown in September 2014
| Value of prizes | Number of prizes |
|---|---|
| £1,000,000 | 2 |
| £100,000 | 4 |
| £50,000 | 8 |
| £25,000 | 16 |
| £10,000 | 40 |
| £5,000 | 81 |
| £1,000 | 1,143 |
| £500 | 3,429 |
| £100 | 15,652 |
| £50 | 15,652 |
| £25 | 1,919,174 |
| Total prize fund value £57,189,650 |
Total number of prizes 1,955,201 |
October’s prize fund rate and odds
The annual Premium Bonds prize fund rate is currently 1.35% and the odds of each individual Bond number winning a prize are 26,000 to 1.
ERNIE
- The Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment, or ERNIE, generates numbers completely at random for the prize draw and it is impossible for anyone to predict ERNIE’s numbers or to influence the results of the draw
- The first ERNIE was invented by one of the original Bletchley Park code breakers
- ERNIE is now in his fourth generation
Keeping track of Premium Bonds
- The NS&I Premium Bonds prize checker app is free to download, quick and easy to use and lets customers check if they’ve won a prize in the past six months
- Customers can also check if they have won by using the Premium Bonds prize checker on nsandi.com
Unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes
- Across the UK there are over 1 million unclaimed Premium Bonds prizes worth more than £47 million
- Premium Bonds holders can reduce the chances of their prizes becoming unclaimed by registering to have any prizes paid directly into their bank accounts (with notification by email):http://www.nsandi.com/register
- There is no time limit for claiming prizes