Premium Bond prize winners may be picked at random, but there is one elite group that has won a top prize more than anyone else.
An impressive 67,394 prizes of £500 or more have been won since 2020 by bondholders with the name ‘David’.
That means that of the 2,780,978 prizes doled out, more than two in every 1,000 have gone to a David.
David tops the most popular names of Premium Bond winners over the last five years, followed by John, Michael, Susan and Peter.
Almost a quarter of the population of the UK hold Premium Bonds with the hope of becoming a millionaire in one of the monthly Premium Bond prize draws by National Savings and Investments (NS&I).
Premium Bond holders have long speculated over the secrets to success, whether a ‘magic’ holding amount, living in a certain area or even if certain bond numbers could be luckier than others in the draw.
National obsession: Almost a quarter of the population of the UK hold Premium Bonds with the hope of becoming a millionaire in one of the monthly prize draws
U sing five years’ worth of exclusive data provided to us by NS&I, Money Mail analysed the past 72 Premium Bond prize draws to find out the most popular names of winners of £500 or more.
Men tend to be luckier than women overall, with men’s names accounting for eight of the top ten luckiest.
Susan and Margaret were the luckiest women’s names, having been in the top ten names every year since 2020.
In 2025, 11,597 people with the name Susan won a Premium Bonds prize of £500 or more. David has been the number one name of all Premium Bond prize winners since 2022. In the two years prior to this, it was John.
Premium Bond holders going by the name of David have already scooped 18,220 prizes this year alone.
In 2024, 21,482 of the 919,869 prizes were handed to Davids while in 2023 the number was 18,742.
One reason for this is they are particularly common names among older generations who are more likely to have significant bond holdings.
Susan, for example, was the most popular name for girls born in 1954 and 1964, while Margaret was the most popular name for girls born between 1924 and 1944, according to data from the Office for National Statistics.
Meanwhile David was the most popular name for boys born between 1954 and 1964 and third most popular between 1974 and 1984 –while John was the most popular name for boys born between 1914 and 1944 and in the ten most popular between 1954 and 1964.
Sylvia and Jill dropped out of the most common Premium Bond prize winners name list in 2021, while Louise entered for the first time in 2022.
Lucky Dave: An impressive 67,394 prizes of £500 or more have been won since 2020 by bondholders with the name ‘David’
You can invest up to £50,000 in Premium Bonds, tax-free. But even if you are called David or Susan, the chances of you winning are slim, with odds at 21,000 to one.
And unless you win, you receive no return on your investment.
Andrew Westhead, NS&I retail director, says: ‘It’s important to remember that whatever your name, the Premium Bonds draw is completely random, with each bond having an equal chance of winning.’
By far the best way to boost your chances of winning a Premium Bonds prize is by owning more Premium Bonds.
This is because every £1 bond entered into the prize draw has the same odds of winning, but the more you hold the more likely you are to win a prize. The average amount kept in Premium Bonds is £5,613.
I n OUR analysis of the past 380 Premium Bonds prize draws and 570 millionaires created over that time using 31 years’ worth of exclusive data provided by NS&I, we found that the average holding of £1 million winners is £24,779.
That’s not to say that small holdings can’t win big. A total of 13 Premium Bonds savers won the £1 million prize with holdings of less than £1,000 over that time period.
It took jackpot winners an average of just five years to land £1 million. And there are 12 Premium Bonds millionaires who won a jackpot prize on their bond’s first ever eligible draw.
Almost a fifth of all Premium Bonds millionaires lived in the south-east of England.
