Family BS Windfall Bond "6 times better winning odds than PBs"

drphila

 I have just noticed that Family BS are offering a limited number of new Windfall Bonds. They claim "The odds of a Windfall Bond win are nearly six times better than Premium Bonds." 

I have no interest in this type of account so have not critiqued it.

In addition to the prize draw, the bond pays an underlying interest rate equal to the BoE Bank Rate, Min Invest £10k, Withdrawals only possible through account closure which requires 35days notice.

https://www.familybuildingsociety.co.uk/savings/bonds/product-detail/windfallbond

MX5huggy

Where is this claim?, I can’t find it. They give the odds of a win which maybe 6 times better but each bond costs 10000 times more. 

Albermarle

here is the link to the odds of winning .
The Windfall Bond Savings Account | Family Building Society
I think you would have to be good at maths to compare them with Premium Bonds .

The obvious issue is that the actual savings rate of 0.1 % is poor . The minimum investment is in £10K tranches and it is effectively a one months notice account .

So even if the claim about the prize winnings was true , then on average you could get a better interest rate for a standard one year fixed rate account.

refluxer

MX5huggy said:

Where is this claim?, I can’t find it. They give the odds of a win which maybe 6 times better but each bond costs 10000 times more. 

The claim is made midway down this page and there is more info on the prizes and chances of winning tucked away here, including this info...

Your chances of winning a prize 

Every month, each qualifying Windfall Bond is allocated one of 15,000 unique tickets and entered into the prize draw. In each monthly prize draw, 21 winning tickets are chosen at random.

Each individual Windfall Bond entered into the draw has a^

• Approximately 1 in 714 chance of winning a prize in any given draw. You can think of this roughly as the 21 selected prize tickets divided by the 15,000 tickets entered into each draw
• Approximately 1 in 60 chance of winning at least one prize across 12 consecutive draws

Rollinghome

If I've read it properly it looks to me like  £1,110,000  a year in prizes.  £10,000 x 15,000 is £150,000,000 in savings so 0.74% in prizes +0.10% interest.

So perhaps not such as good a comparison as they suggest and requiring 35 days notice to withdraw.

refluxer

I guess many of the Premium Bond 'big holders' on here rely on the smaller wins (eg. £25, £50 etc) to effectively pay them a reasonable form of 'interest', with a chance of a bigger win as a bonus.

With this Windfall Bond, the 59 in 60 chance of winning nothing in a typical year coupled with the small interest rate (£10 per year per £10k bond) is almost certainly not going to attract the same crowd, plus those with smaller Premium Bond holdings won't be keen on the £10k per ticket limitation and probably neither would be happy with the longer notice period compared to the day or two it takes to cash in Premium Bonds.

I think Windfall Bonds might have possibly been a bit more interesting back in the days when they paid a base rate of 0.75%, as mentioned in this Premium vs Windfall Bonds comparison/opinion article from 2018. 

oz0707

Ive got full premium bonds and like you say mostly its multiple 25 prizes. This month was 4. I've only ever had one month with bigger prizes there was a 500, 100 if I remember right and some 25's too. Never been repeated since...

Purple_sox

I know that these Windfall Bonds are no longer available but i was just wondering if anyone here has any of these bonds and, more importantly, have you ever won anything? 

I have a total of 7 Bonds, bought between May 2018 and Feb 2020. According to my rough calculations, this has given me around 350 'chances' at winning, but so far .... nothing! Although the draw is not my main reason for having them, I'd have thought that I might have had even a small win by now. 

dali21

I only have one bond held for several years and have never won either. 

subjecttocontract

Yes I've got some of these bonds. No wins so far but I live in hope whilst I collect my 5.25% interest payments. The interest paid is very good and it only takes one small win to tip the scales significantly.

Another way to look at it is im getting around 0.75% less interest than I could get in a 6% 1 year fixed account. So each £10,000 bond is costing me around £1.50 a week to take part in the prize draw.