Premium bond

postgirl wrote: »

I am planning to buy some premium bonds. I read on the website following,

Bonds are not transferable at any time. Following the
death of a Bond holder, the value of the Bonds will form part
of the deceased Bond holder’s estate

Can someone explain it in simple English. I do not want to invest money if on one will benefit from it after my unplanned death.

Suppose you buy £1000 of premium bonds and one of their numbers comes up for the £1,000,000 prize on 1 January 2016. If you died on 2 January then your heirs would get the value of both your bonds (£1000) plus the prize you won. However if you had died on 31 December 2015 your heirs would only get the value of the bonds (£1000) back. They would not get the £1m because your bonds were effectively automatically encashed on your death the day before. (Someone else will get to win the £1m.)

When my mother died I was given the option to leave the bonds for a year (which I did) or to redeem them straight away. The money was automatically sent to me a year after her death.

However obviously I didn't get the choice until I told them she had died. So if in the meantime one had come up, presumably the money would have been paid out because I most certainly wouldn't have opted for immediate redemption in those circumstances!

(They didn't win anything.)

Pincher wrote: »

There is no bond printed on paper, and it's not very obvious you have any, unless you tell somebody.

If you want somebody to get it after your unplanned death, you had better leave some clues, like write a Will, and a note for the Executor, with your NS&I details.

Individual bonds are no longer printed but if you get a win you will receive through the post an updated statement of all your bonds you hold. I'm sure you can request this from NS&I if you haven't generated a statement through a win.

:rotfl:You couldn't make this up. Literally as I am typing this the postman has just delivered a revised statements of premium bond holdings for my wife and I as a result of us having invested some more money in them last month.

Pincher wrote: »

Which is what you would enclose with the Note to the Executor.

I get these updates, too, but if you were the Executor, and you ring up NS&I, and say, I don't have any account numbers, just a name and address, do you mind telling me what holding the deceased has, you are going to get the Data Protection Shuffle. On the other hand, if the OP is dead, what does she care about the hassle the Executor has to go through.

Went through this as an executor last year and I've got to say NS&I are excellent and very easy to deal with. One application and they check all their types of savings instruments as part of the service just in case there are undiscovered accounts that as an executor you are not aware of.