NS&I Annual Report 2025-26 and NS&I Bereavement Claims Quarterly Update published

• NS&I delivered £12.1 billion of Net Financing to the Government in 2025-26, meeting its target of £13 billion +/- £4 billion
• NS&I’s Bereavement Claims Quarterly Update: just under 30,300 estates with holdings of up to £181.9 million are affected. Of these, up to 15,600 estates have holdings over £10 and repayments to them are now underway
• New bereavement claims are now being responded to within 14 days following earlier delays

NS&I today announced its results for the year to 31 March 2026 and published its first Bereavement Claims Quarterly Update. Key points include:

Net Financing

NS&I delivered £12.1 billion of Net Financing to the Government in 2025-26, meeting its target of £13 billion +/- £4 billion. NS&I delivered an estimated £2.4 billion of savings to the taxpayer in 2025-26, compared with raising the same amount of debt financing via the sale of gilts.

Premium Bonds prizes

In 2025-26, NS&I paid out more than 72 million Premium Bonds prizes worth over £4.8 billion.

Service Delivery Measures

In total, NS&I achieved five out of its six service delivery measures in 2025-26. NS&I met the service delivery measures for Net Financing; Customer satisfaction (85.4%); Government Payment Services delivery; Digital-first (which measures the volume of customers using lower-cost digital channels); and Employee engagement.

NS&I missed its efficiency ratio target in 2025-26: for every £100 of stock held, the administration cost was 8.47p, against a target of 7.20p. This was due to delays in the delivery of its Transformation Programme, which meant NS&I faced a longer period of higher costs while it paid to run the existing business, alongside paying for the development of new, transformed services. See page 15 of NS&I’s Annual Report and Accounts for full details.

Bereavement claims update

On 26 March 2026, the Minister for Pensions announced that NS&I had identified an issue where the estates of deceased customers were not always repaid money from all of their accounts following a bereavement claim.

In March 2026, NS&I’s initial estimate was that 37,500 estates with a total value of £476 million may have been affected by this issue. As the work to analyse cases has progressed, this number has reduced and is likely to reduce further. In May, NS&I’s assessment was that some 34,000 estates with a value of £367 million may be affected. In the months since, NS&I has continued to analyse cases and today its estimate is that just under 30,300 estates with a value of up to £181.9 million may be affected.

Of these, up to 15,600 have holdings of £10 and over, and the process of reviewing these cases to identify those in which a tracing error occurred and contacting the affected estates to reunite them with the full value of those holdings and compensate them, began in late May. Over £3 million in repayments and compensation has been issued to 613 affected estates so far.

The £10 de minimis, announced in May, reflects the priority NS&I attaches to returning funds to those affected, while avoiding creating disproportionate administrative burdens and disturbance in the case of the smallest holdings.

To ensure estates have not been disadvantaged by NS&I’s error and the resulting delay in receiving the money they are entitled to, the payments include the higher of the interest accrued since the error occurred, or the Bank of England base rate plus one percentage point, in line with Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) principles.

NS&I continues to expect the compensation scheme to be completed in the first half of 2027. While it has focused on starting repayments, NS&I is also working with specialist data search providers and other government departments on more automated methods to gather the data needed to complete cases more efficiently, which will increase the rate of repayments.

Further information is included in NS&I’s Bereavement Claims Quarterly Update published on NS&I’s website today here.

Bereavement claims processing

These errors happened because the search process used when handling a bereavement claim failed to identify all relevant accounts. The issue was resolved for current and new bereavement claims from January this year and measures were introduced to ensure this does not happen again.

NS&I’s new, more robust bereavement claims tracing process takes longer to carry out. Unfortunately, this meant that response times temporarily worsened over the spring/early summer to eight weeks, while NS&I trained and deployed more staff to manage claims.

NS&I is now responding to new claims within its service standard of 14 days.

Accounts qualification

As the bereavement claims issue emerged after the Supplementary Estimate process had concluded, NS&I was unable to seek sufficient additional provision through that process. NS&I has therefore reported an overspend against its agreed budget for the 2025-26 year, meaning that the Comptroller and Auditor General has reported an ‘excess vote’ qualified opinion on NS&I’s Accounts.

NS&I’s Transformation Programme

NS&I’s Transformation Programme is fundamental to the future delivery of NS&I’s core purpose: raising vital funding for HM Treasury. NS&I operates in an increasingly competitive and digitally enabled savings market and its ability to grow the amount of funding it raises to meet HM Treasury’s needs and respond to changing customer needs is constrained by its ageing technology, legacy data, an outdated outsourcing model and limited operational agility.

As was highlighted by the National Audit Office (NAO) in November 2025 and the Public Accounts Committee in February 2026, NS&I fundamentally underestimated the complexity of replacing a highly integrated legacy technology and data estate, the capability required to manage delivery across multiple suppliers, the commercial and technical dependencies involved, and the time and cost needed to deliver the intended outcomes.

NS&I has now secured HM Treasury approval for a new business case that resets the Programme from an unaffordable cost model and unachievable timeline to a controlled delivery route based on a simplified solution. This includes re-baselining the programme plan, strengthening delivery and commercial controls, maturing the solution and cost model, and demonstrating that the Programme has addressed the historic issues identified by the NAO and the Public Accounts Committee. A summary of the Accounting Officer Assessment that was produced in the summer to accompany the business case has been published today.

NS&I Interim Chief Executive, Sir Jim Harra, said:

“NS&I delivered vital funding and significant value for money in 2025-26, raising £12.1 billion of Net Financing for the Treasury and saving £2.4 billion compared with raising the same amount from the sale of gilts.

“I want to reiterate my apology to everyone affected by the bereavement claims issue. Repaying estates the money that is rightfully theirs and restoring our normal high service standards are key steps in putting things right, and this process is now underway.

“I am pleased that NS&I’s Transformation Programme is back on track, ensuring NS&I can improve its offering to savers, resilience and cost efficiency, and raise even more vital funding for HM Treasury for years to come.

“We know that regaining the trust of our customers will only come when we can show that we have learnt broader lessons from these issues, and we are committed to doing so.”

NS&I financial results 2021-22 to 2025-26^*

All figures are in £ billion and are subject to rounding.

^*All figures (with the exception of Net Financing) include Green Savings Bonds.

^**C&AIP is capitalised and accrued interest and prizes earned. All figures are in £ billion and subject to rounding.

Notes to Editors

• NS&I reports quarterly on gross inflows and outflows, Net Financing and total stock. Each quarter, NS&I releases unaudited figures and has published its audited Annual Report and audited accounts for 2025-26, which can be downloaded here. Net Financing excludes Green Savings Bonds, as they are a policy product.
• Net Financing – the measure of the net change of NS&I funds, meaning total inflows from deposits, retention of maturing monies and capitalised and accrued interest, less the total outflows from withdrawals and interest or Premium Bonds prize draw payments. A positive Net Financing figure represents a positive contribution to government financing.
• The Net Financing target for 2026-27 is £15 billion +/- £4 billion.
• Customer satisfaction as of March 2026: 85.40%pts, target: 80%pts. © Ipsos 2026, Financial Research Survey (FRS), for the 12 months ended 31 March 2026. Results based on a sample of 11,393 adults (aged 16+) that hold NS&I savings products. The survey contacts around 50,000 adults (aged 16+) a year in total across Great Britain. Interviews were over the phone and online, taking into account (and weighted to) the overall profile of the adult population. The results reflect the percentage of NS&I savings product customers who were extremely, very or fairly satisfied with NS&I as a savings provider.
• Government Payment Services (GPS) delivery performance measures how well NS&I delivers key service levels for our business-to-business clients; Digital-first measures the number of NS&I’s digital transactions divided by the total number of NS&I’s transactions; and Employee engagement measures the level of NS&I employee engagement in the Civil Service People Survey.
• NS&I is one of the largest savings organisations in the UK. All products offer 100% security, because NS&I is backed by HM Treasury.
• Information on NS&I’s on sale products can be found here.
• Further information on NS&I, including press releases and product information, is available on the website at nsandi.com.