Blocked access to Premium Bond accounts from abroad

Raveloe

Off on a European holiday.

It's really good here.

I think I'll extend my stay for a couple of weeks and move some money from my online Premium Bond account to pay for it.

NS&I: You are abroad, you cannot log in to your account.

I'll try a VPN using a UK server; that should work.

NS&I: You are using a VPN, you cannot log in to your account.

Oh Gov! What is the internet for? What is your problem? Why can I not access my own money in my own account to live in a world where people habitually cross borders?

Fortunately, I have just enough left to buy a rugged pair of trainers. Thanks to NS&I, I certainly won't be the first to walk home from Malaga.

fwor

In fairness, I don't think NS&I describe their products as anything other than dedicated savings accounts for UK residents, so if you're expecting to transfer money to and from the accounts from anywhere in the world, you're probably expecting too much!

Without an insight from within NS&I I doubt that anyone here knows the exact reason, and I'm pretty sure it would be a sackable offence for an NS&I employee to come on here and talk about account security, so we aren't going to get that.

It may be that historically their security staff have noticed  suspiciously high levels of access attempts from outside the UK, and that they have chosen to restrict access for that reason? That's just a guess, of course.

eskbanker

fwor said:

In fairness, I don't think NS&I describe their products as anything other than dedicated savings accounts for UK residents, so if you're expecting to transfer money to and from the accounts from anywhere in the world, you're probably expecting too much!

On the contrary, they've always made it clear that their products are available to non-residents:

https://www.nsandi.com/help/join-nsandi/using-nsandi-outside-uk

fwor

Ah, good point - I never realised!

Perhaps it is a limitation of the new two-factor authentication system then?

Without an insight from within NS&I, I suspect that we will never know the exact reason...