04/08: Premium Bond Rip Off
NS&I in consultation with its masters at the Treasury, took the deliberate decision to stop aggressively competing for savings last autumn (2008). Banks faced with paralysed wholesale funding markets were suddenly desperate for ordinary depositors and ministers wanted to ease their plight. NS&I abandoned discretionary advertising and its product terms were made less attractive.
That policy reached a new low in April 2009 when the Premium Bond prize pool was reduced from 1.8 per cent of outstanding bonds to only 1 per cent, a niggardly low not seen since Ernest Marples, the Postmaster-General at the time, pressed Ernie’s on switch in 1957.
NS&I argued that the effective yield was still twice base rate and it introduced a new mini-prize of £25, but the customers were not mollified. A bondholder with a maximum £30,000 holding, who with average luck was making £1,350 in annual prizes five years ago, can now expect only £300. http://business.timesonline.co.uk
You are better off spending any savings you have - there is no point in saving anymore.
That policy reached a new low in April 2009 when the Premium Bond prize pool was reduced from 1.8 per cent of outstanding bonds to only 1 per cent, a niggardly low not seen since Ernest Marples, the Postmaster-General at the time, pressed Ernie’s on switch in 1957.
NS&I argued that the effective yield was still twice base rate and it introduced a new mini-prize of £25, but the customers were not mollified. A bondholder with a maximum £30,000 holding, who with average luck was making £1,350 in annual prizes five years ago, can now expect only £300. http://business.timesonline.co.uk
You are better off spending any savings you have - there is no point in saving anymore.