News from the 2018 Budget

Premium Bonds

The Budget on 29 October 2018 included a range of future enhancements to NS&I Premium Bonds, aiming to encourage a stronger savings habit and boost the opportunity for young people to save.

• We will be reducing the minimum investment from £100 to £25. This will make a fun and safe way to save even more accessible for a wider range of people.
• Anyone over 16 will be able to buy Premium Bonds as a gift for children under 16. (At the moment, only a child’s parents, guardians or grandparents can buy Premium Bonds for them.) So anyone aged over 16 – from aunts, uncles, godparents to family friends – will be able to give a gift that lasts to a child under 16. The child’s parent or guardian will still look after the Bonds until the child turns 16.
• We will be launching a new app to make saving with Premium Bonds even easier. Following the success of our Premium Bonds prize checker app, our new app will allow customers to buy and manage their Premium Bonds as well as most other NS&I accounts.

We’ll announce dates for these changes as soon as we can.

Index-linked Savings Certificates

Also detailed in the Budget, we will be changing the way we calculate index-linking on our Index-linked Savings Certificates, in line with the reduced use of the Retail Prices Index (RPI) by successive governments since 2010. We will be using the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) instead. We’re making this change to save money for taxpayers while still giving a fair return to savers.

If you have any Index-linked Savings Certificates, the change will only affect you when each Certificate reaches the end of its investment term on or after 1 May 2019. If you choose to renew a mature Certificate for a further investment term on or after that date, we will calculate the index-linking using the CPI instead of the RPI. You will still benefit from inflation-beating, tax-free savings – we will just be using a different index.

You can find out more here: