NS&I - National Savings and Investments

(Join me for a new weekly series - Pocket Money - where I explain financial basics in fewer than 200 words. Feel free to make suggestions!)

NS&I is a bank, owned by the UK government, who only offer savings. You can’t get current accounts, mortgages or credit cards from them. 

Because NS&I is backed by HM Treasury, 100% of your money is fully guaranteed by the government. No limits. This is different to other providers, where your money is only guaranteed up to £120,000 in the event that they fail, under the FSCS deposit protection scheme. (This limit was increased from £85,000 in December 2025 if that figure looks a bit squiffy...). 

They offer a range of products including ISAs, savings accounts, fixed-term bonds and income bonds but they are the sole providers of premium bonds (which everybody seems to love for some reason even though it's more of a lottery than an interest bearing product…). 

When you put money into NS&I, you are effectively lending to the UK government and so it's one of the ways that they raise the money they need for public spending.

Love Eleanor. xxx