Not a bad coronavirus punt: Saver grabs a 7,000% return after scooping £1m Premium Bonds jackpot from a February 2020 investment
- A Stoke-on-Trent saver turned a £14,000 investment into the £1m jackpot
- The visit from Agent Million means they secured a 7,042% return
- Over the same period putting the money in UK stocks could have cost them 16%
- Other savers this month saw similar four-figure returns on their Premium Bond holdings – one saver with a £1,000 holding won £50,000
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
A saver from Stoke-on-Trent might have secured the best investment of the coronavirus lockdown – bagging a 7,000 per cent return on their Premium Bonds in just five months.
The man bought £14,000 worth of Britain’s best-loved savings product in February 2020 and one of the Bonds scooped the £1million jackpot in this month’s draw.
He opted for the safe haven of Treasury-backed National Savings and Investments just as indices were beginning to flash red, ahead of one of the worst three-month periods in the history of international stock markets.
Piggy power: A Stoke-on-Trent saver who bought some Premium Bonds in February scooped one of the two £1m jackpots
While his £14,000 investment boomed by 7,042 per cent between February and June, and his total Bonds holding of £27,500 by 3,536 per cent, over the same period the FTSE All-Share has slumped by 16 per cent and the American S&P 500 6.3 per cent.
Despite the recent stock market recovery, investing £14,000 in a fund which tracked the FTSE All-Share at the start of February, rather than depositing it in Premium Bonds, would have left him with £11,668.
The man became the second Premium Bond millionaire from Stoke-on-Trent, while June’s other jackpot winner was from Nottingham.
She held the maximum £50,000 worth of Bonds, seeing a buy-and-hold investment strategy pay off as a January 2017 purchase led to her being visited by Agent Million.
She was the eighth millionaire from the East Midlands city.
The FTSE All-Share Index may have recovered from one of the worst falls in the history of the stock market, but it is still down 16% on where it was at the start of February
In total, more than 3.6million prizes were handed out by NS&I this month, worth more than £104million.
Some other holders of Britain’s best-loved savings product also saw a big return.
One saver from Kent turned a £2,250 holding bought in March 2018 into £100,000 this month, a similarly stellar return of 4,344 per cent.
And someone from Northamptonshire bagged a similar return, turning a £1,000 holding bought a month later into £50,000.
Premium Bonds Winners
| Prize | Area | Value of bond |
| £1,000,000 | Nottingham | £25,000 |
| £1,000,000 | Stoke-On-Trent | £14,000 |
| £100,000 | Hereford and Worcester | £10,000 |
| £100,000 | Kent | £2,250 |
| £100,000 | Berkshire | £29,436 |
| £100,000 | Essex | £5,000 |
| £100,000 | Bromley | £10,000 |
| £100,000 | Devon | £45,000 |
More June 2020 winners
To put these returns into context, every £1 Bond has a roughly 24,500 to 1 chance of winning a prize of £25 or more, with Bonds earning an average prize fund rate of 1.4 per cent annually.
That blows all other easy-access savings account rates out of the water if you’re feeling lucky, while NS&I’s Income Bonds paying 1.16 per cent and its Direct Saver paying 1 per cent are also among the best savings rates available at the moment.
If you’re a Premium Bonds holder, you can check to see if your number’s up with This is Money’s price checker, use the NS&I app, be notified by email, post or text or ask an Amazon Alexa smart speaker, if you have won.