National Savings and Investments (NS&I) has confirmed it has paid out more than £3 million in repayments and compensation to 613 estates. The payments follow failures that meant bereaved families were missing out on savings pots.
The Treasury-backed provider is contacting affected estates with holdings of £10 or more to reunite them with the full value of the assets that should have been returned to them earlier. NS&I offers a range of savings and investments to customers, including Premium Bonds, and money held with it has 100% security as it is backed by the Treasury.
Operational failure and response
NS&I notified the Treasury in December of an operational failure to trace accounts comprehensively of some customers who had died. The errors happened because the search process used when handling bereavement claims failed to identify all relevant accounts.
The savings company said the issue was resolved for current and new bereavement claims from January, and measures were introduced to ensure the error does not happen again. Its more "robust" bereavement claims tracing process takes longer to carry out, which meant response times temporarily worsened over the spring and early summer to eight weeks while NS&I trained and deployed more staff to manage claims. NS&I said it is now responding to new claims within its service standard of 14 days.
Scale of the issue and compensation
In March, NS&I's initial estimate was that 37,500 estates with a total value of £476 million may have been affected. By May, the figures were put at 34,000 and £367 million respectively. NS&I's current estimate is that just under 30,300 estates with a value of up to £181.9 million may be affected, of which up to 15,600 have holdings of £10 and over.
Some cases that were initially treated as affected have been excluded as claims were already in place that have been completed through normal processing. The payments include the higher figure of either the interest accrued since the error happened or the Bank of England base rate plus one percentage point.
Compensation scheme timeline
NS&I said it still expects the compensation scheme to be completed in the first half of 2027. Interim chief executive Sir Jim Harra said: "I want to reiterate my apology to everyone affected by the bereavement claims issue. Repaying estates the money that is rightfully theirs and restoring our normal high service standards are key steps in putting things right, and this process is now under way."
