Premium Bonds warning as NS&I suddenly removes account access | Personal Finance | Finances

A Premium Bonds customer was alarmed when he suddenly lost access to his savings that he could previously see online.

The saver contacted NS&I via

“Now that you’ve removed her account from my login, I can no longer identify it. Are you deliberately making such actions difficult?”

NS&I responded to express their condolences for the situation and explain the rules for savers. They said: “When a child turns 16, they automatically become the authority on their business, according to the terms and conditions of the product.

“If the account is held while she is a child, all correspondence regarding the account will be sent by post to the responsible parent. This correspondence will include the child’s holder number and/or NS&I number.”

The provider went on to say that this documentation should be “passed” to the child as they can now manage their own property.

NS&I also asked the parents whether they have access to their daughter’s Bond data. The customer said they always knew this would be the process, but were annoyed by the sudden switch.

They explained: “I am unhappy with NSI’s procedures for this. I do not have my daughter’s bond details as they were kept online and visible through my account. And now they are no longer.”

NS&I then asked if the daughter “she still wants to access her credit with us online/over the phone, as the account was previously managed by you?”

But the customer was still frustrated with the service and replied, “That’s not relevant. You removed her bonds from my account and told her she had to access them by getting her account number from me. I don’t have that.

“So neither of us currently have access. This is an action by NSI without prompt/request.”

NS&I then invited the customer to use the tracking service which ‘can track an account without leaving any data’, and added a link to a web page with more information about this.

The depositor again expressed his annoyance, saying: “I have not lost the details. You have taken them away. I would like them to be provided to myself or my daughter without insisting on unnecessary administration.”

NS&I responded: “Under these circumstances this will probably be necessary. It may be possible to trace the account over the telephone, subject to successful completion of security checks, but there is no guarantee that a trace can be completed without the use of the linked form. “

The customer later added that their daughter had received a welcome letter, but it did not contain a holder number.

NS&I responded: “We apologize for the lack of information in the welcome letter. If your daughter could print our registration form and ask us to track her account details, we will then write back to her with her login details and her holder number.”