Lottery savings accounts: Yorkshire BS launch Make Me a Saver

Yorkshire Building Society is one of the largest firms to offer a savings account that offers the opportunity to win monthly prizes.

It’s a regular saver account with a limit of £150 per month, meaning £1,800 can be saved over 12 months. 

The Make Me a Saver account pays 1 per cent interest and instant access to savings without penalty.

It will also offer 10 £1,500 prizes each month, in a similar move to other banks and mutuals looking to attract savers in the same way as hugely popular Premium Bonds do.

You can open a new savings account in branches or agencies, as well as online.

To be entered into one of the prize draws, customers need to deposit money into the account and increase the balance by at least £50 each month.

This account allows unlimited withdrawals at once without any loss of interest.

Between March 2022 – January 2023, a total of 11 prizes will be drawn. Accounts mature on 31 January 2023.

James Blower is the head of digital for Moneyfacts.co.uk. He said, “I believe the new Yorkshire monthly saver is a very good addition to the market.

“It is nice to have a monthly prize drawing that offers both an attractive rate of interest as well as the possibility of cash prizes. It’s not either/or.”

It’s great to be able to access the account without prior notice. This is a big difference from regular savers who are tied down for a period before they have cash.

“While regular savings accounts are more lucrative, it is worth looking into for savers who need access to cash or the opportunity to win significant prizes.

Yorkshire Building Society hopes the new product it has developed will inspire people to start saving.

Chris Irwin from Yorkshire Building Society, is director of savings and believes this account will help savers start a new saving habit for 2022.

According to abrdn research, more than 50% of adult Americans intend to improve their financial status in 2022. The majority also plan to save more.

Irwin stated: “Now more than ever with current economic uncertainty and possible future economic instability, it’s vital for individuals to attempt to build their financial resilience and for society to assist people in saving.

“We will continue to assist people in establishing a healthy savings account and improving their financial well-being. We are trying to encourage a save first culture that helps people set aside money to build a nest egg.

It compares to other savings offers.

Regular savings deals are far less lucrative than the 1 percent offer.

A saver stashing away the maximum £150 each month into this account could expect to earn £8.27 of interest after one year.

The market leading deal offered by Cambridge Building Society pays 5 per cent interest on its extra reward regular saver account, and limits monthly deposits to £250 with a maximum balance of £3,000.

A customer will have to also be eligible if they are to purchase another product through the building society.

Unlike the Yorkshire Building Society’s instant access, this deal doesn’t allow withdrawals for up to one year.

That said, for an eligible saver stashing away the maximum £250 each month, after one year they would have accrued £81.58 in interest.

NatWest regular savers are limited to depositing just £50 each month

NatWest allows regular savers to earn 3 per cent interest on balances up to £1,000 although savers will be limited to depositing a maximum of £50 a month.

Savers have access to their funds at any time, as with the Yorkshire Building Society offer.

A saver putting away £50 each month via the NatWest saver could expect to have accrued £8.32 in interest by the end of the year.

Nationwide and TSB offer rates of 2 percent for those who want to save more. 

Every month, TSB picks five lucky winners to receive £1,000 and 50 winners to receive £100

TSB’s regular saver allows customers to earn interest on balances up to £1,500 by saving between £25 and £125 each month. 

You can also access your funds immediately with no fees.

A saver stashing away the maximum amount each month could earn £14.16 in interest over the course of a year.

Nationwide’s offer is a little more generous paying 2 per cent interest on maximum monthly deposits of £200.

However, those with four withdrawals or more will have their rate decrease to 0.35 percent for the remainder of the term.  

It compares to other monthly prize draw prizes.

It’s not a new concept for banks and building societies to offer monthly prizes. Don’t be surprised to see even more in 2022.

Blower stated that there are many other savings accounts offering prize draws like the Family Building Society’s Windfall Bond and TSB My Dream. However, both offer lower interest rates.

“I believe we will see more banks following suit. The popularity of Premium Bonds, which have gone from strength to strength, combined with the record amount of money held in them, shows that savers are interested in these accounts.

Yorkshire Building Society claims that there will always be 10 prizes for each month. It doesn’t matter how many people are eligible to enter the draw.

This is a savings product that you can sign up for as soon as possible. You will be more likely to win cash prizes if you do.

One example: If a customer applies for the draw and they have a minimum of 3,000 eligible accounts per monthly draw, chances of winning are 1 in 300. But, if that number rises to 10,000 eligible accounts the chances of winning increase to 1 in 1,000. 

This means that your chances of winning are higher than those offered by other providers. However, this may change quickly as Yorkshire Building Society boasts almost three million customers to which it is able to advertise the deal.

Notable is also the fact that all prize draws are open to savers, regardless of whether they won in any previous month. This is how the rivals stack up: 

NS&I pays out around three million tax- free prizes ranging from £25 to £1m every month to Bond holders

NS&I’s Premium Bonds

When it comes to monthly prize draws, NS&I’s Premium Bonds will likely be the first product that comes to most people’s minds.

The Premium Bond draw has been running since 1956 and there are now 21.1million Premium Bond holders holding more than 113 billion eligible £1 bonds between them.

NS&I pays out around three million tax-free prizes ranging from £25 to £1million every month to Bond holders.

The odds of winning a monthly prize with £1 bond is currently fixed at 34,500.

The odds of winning the £1 million prize with a single £1 bond are just one in 56.54 billion whilst the odds of winning a £100,000 prize is one in 22.62 billion.

This can vary depending on how hard you work.

Having £50,000 worth of Premium Bonds will improve your odds of winning the £1million jackpot to one in 1,130,800.

The Windfall Bond has a maximum capacity of 15,000 open accounts, each holding £10,000.

Family Building Society Windfall Bonds 

Alternatives to Premium Bonds that are less well-known include the Family Building Society’s Windfall Bonds.

Family Building Society’s Windfall Bonds, which began in 2015, have £140million stashed away in them and only a few thousand customers

Premium Bonds require a minimum investment of £25 to enter the draw, whilst Windfall Bonds require a far heftier £10,000 deposit.

However, there is no maximum cap on Windfall Bonds, subject to availability, whereas with Premium Bonds you can deposit a maximum of £50,000.

There are currently 14,000 Windfall Bond accounts, each holding £10,000 – but many bond holders have more than one account.  

Presently, 15,000 Windfall Bonds are being entered into the Monthly Prize Draw. The remaining 1,000 spots have been taken by blank tickets. 

Although this could decrease if there are more participants in the draw, Family Building Society claims it doesn’t affect the chance of winning.

Each qualifying £10,000 bond is entered into a free draw for a chance to win one of 21 monthly prizes. There are fifteen worth £1,000, three worth £2,500, two worth £10,000 and one £50,000 prize.

Only one month’s prize is available to each qualifying entry. Each Windfall Bond entering the draw will have a chance of winning one out 714 prizes. 

 There have been over 105,000 winners of Halifax’s prize draw and the bank has paid out over £57 million in prizes so far to its customers.

Halifax Savers Prize Draw

Customers with Halifax current accounts can sign up online or in person at a branch to receive a savings draw.

Each month over 1,600 savings customers in the Halifax draw are randomly selected to win money – three of the prizes being worth £100,000.

However, there is one barrier to overcome as they’ll need to hold £5,000 or more in savings for a whole month to be entered into the following month’s prize draw.

The £5,000 can be made up of multiple pots across any Halifax savings account including cash Isas, although children’s accounts are excluded.

Lloyds Banking Group (of which Halifax is part) declined to disclose how many current customers are eligible because the numbers change from month to month. 

National Member Prize Draw

Nationwide members benefit from a monthly prize draw split into 8,008 prizes, with one worth £100,000, two worth £25,000, five worth £10,000 and the rest all worth £100.

Nationwide members, unlike Halifax, are automatically opted into. This means that as long as there’s a Nationwide mortgage, savings, or current account, you don’t have to do anything.

The Nationwide membership currently stands at 14.2 million. This would make it possible for you to win any of the prizes. However, these odds could change from month-to-month depending upon the number of eligible members.

The odds of winning one of the eight big-value prizes of either £10,000, £25,000 or £100,000 is just one in 1,775,000 each month.

My Dream, TSB

TSB is currently awarding five prizes of £1,000 and fifty prizes of £100 to randomly selected customers who enter the draw.

Six draws are being conducted, the first in December. The money is paid into savings accounts.

To enrol, its current account customers need to put money into a ‘savings pot’ within their Spend & Save, or Spend & Save Plus current account.  

TSB says that at the moment, 180,000 savings cans are in use. But, it is possible for this to increase as more customers learn about the draw. So, the earlier you get involved, the better your chances of winning.

Based on the current number of people opted in, there is roughly a one in 3,275 chance of winning either a £1,000 or £100 monthly prize, or one in 545 over the course of the six month period.