Important to check for prizes

eebkent

My wife has held Premium Bonds for years, but her few wins were always notified by post, with a cheque or warrant enclosed.  This month she also had a winning bond (just gbp25, as you'd expect).  She was notified by a rather cryptic email, and I had to use the prize checker to find out the prize.  That told me that she had  7 unclaimed prizes from between 2013 and 2018.  I have no idea why Ernie's helpers didn't notify any of these.   I'd advise readers to check for prizes regularly, since it's clear that Ernie's notifications are hardly complete.

RacingDriver

You could also choose to have any prizes paid directly into your bank account so they would never go unclaimed in the future.

Or if you have less than the maximum £50,000 in Premium Bonds, you can choose for any prizes to be automatically invested in new bonds.

Thrugelmir

Open an online account with NSI. Far easier to adminster everything. 

jamesd

Perhaps better to use the online service and give NS&I a bank account and they will automatically pay winnings into it if desired. Or reinvest if that's preferred. You can swap between the two whenever you like.

Glad your wife did discover them eventually, though I agree that it took longer than it should for her to find out.