Tens of thousands of British expats are owed more than £3 million in unclaimed premium bond prizes and they are being urged to come forward to pick up their cash.
The biggest expat prize waiting collection is £100,000 for a woman who holds six bonds, but National Savings (NS&I) cannot pay the money because they do not know where she lives.
The winning number that scooped the big prize in April 2007 is 5ET395766.
Another £50,000 is waiting for an unidentified expat who holds bond number 23XP070061, which won in May 2011, and £10,000 for a woman holding the winning number 45EW362051 whose number came up in February 2013.
NS&I has 63,600 expat winners – most have won £5,000 or less and some of the winning bonds date back to August 1960.
Unlike the National Lottery, premium bond prizes never expire and the money is held in a special fund awaiting collection.
The cash prizes are also paid tax-free.
Online service
However, only a quarter of expats have kept their contact details up-to-date with the NS&I, so thousands of prizes ranging from just £25 to the jackpot £100,000 remain locked in the NS&I vault.
Other big prizes may be available – but due to data protection rules, NS&I can only reveal details of wins for countries where more than 100,000 premium bond customers live to protect the winner’s anonymity.
According to the Office of National Statistics, around 5 million Brits live overseas and the favourite destinations are Australia, Spain, France, India and the USA, which all have expat populations of more than 100,000.
To try to pay out some of the winnings, NS&I is urging expats to register their contact details online.
A new payments service means they can have their winnings transferred directly into their bank accounts, wherever they are in the world.
Forgotten prizes
Jill Waters and assistant director at NS&I, said: “Our expat £100,000 winner has probably forgotten they have premium bonds or thinks that she cannot claim a prize if she lives abroad, which is not true.
“We want to make claiming prizes as easy as we can, so signing up to the international payments service lets them transfer any money without paying any fees
“Most bonds are unclaimed because people move house and forget to let us know, or someone bought them for them when they were a child and they are unaware they own the bonds.
“Even if someone dies, the money should go into their estate for their executor to distribute, so the winnings are never really lost.”
