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Media centre /
Press releaseONLY THREE WEEKS LEFT TO GET ERNIE’S EXTRAS10 October 2006
Premium Bonds launched 50 years ago on 1 November 1956 – archive footage, unique interviews and photo opportunities are available There are only three weeks left to buy Premium Bonds to be part of the biggest prize draw since they were launched, 50 years ago. National Savings and Investments (NS&I) will give away five £1 million prizes in December’s draw to celebrate 50 years of Premium Bonds. There will be three extra jackpots as well as the usual two, giving customers five chances to win £1 million, plus there will still be over a million other tax-free* prizes. A second anniversary draw with five jackpots will be held in June 2007. The extra prizes are being introduced by NS&I as part of the anniversary celebrations and are in addition to the normal prizes. The odds of a £1,000 holding winning one of the jackpot prizes is estimated to improve from 16 million to 1 to 6.5 million to 1 for December and June. The odds of a £10,000 holding winning one of the jackpot prizes is estimated to improve from 1.6 million to 1 to 646,000 to 1. The overall odds of winning any prize with a £1 Bond will remain the same at 24,000 to 1. For customers to have the chance of taking part in the December draw, they must have bought their Premium Bonds before 31 October 2006. Sharing success The Premium Bond prize fund rate will increase from 3.15% to 3.30% tax-free*, for the two anniversary draws**. Premium Bonds first went on sale on 1 November 1956 and the first draw was on 1 June 1957, the anniversary draws are to celebrate these dates. Prize draws between the anniversaries will be unchanged**. Premium Bonds were designed to encourage saving among people who were not attracted by interest but by winning cash prizes. They were immediately a success story and continue to be incredibly popular – in fact more Premium Bonds were bought in the last five years than in the previous 45 years put together. 23 million people, almost 40% of the population own more than £32 billion Premium Bonds. ENDS Notes to Editors 1. * All Premium Bond prizes are free of UK income Tax and Capital Gains tax. 2. ** This assumes there are no other interest rate changes between October 06 and June 07. 3. Pictures of ERNIE (including the new ERNIE 4 machine), Agent Million and buying Premium Bonds online are available in high-resolution jpeg format from the NS&I media team. 4. Journalists requiring more information on National Savings and Investments (NS&I), including press releases, product information and digital images, please contact the NS&I media team. 5. NS&I has a number of spokespeople available for interviews and our experienced radio team is available via our ISDN line: 020 7602 4522. 6. Subscribe to the NS&I RSS newsfeed. Simply copy and paste this link www.nsandi.com/mediacentre.xml into your RSS reader to receive regular news alerts from NS&I.
Media team The numbers below are for media use only. Customers wishing to contact NS&I can find details here.
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