Tell NS&I online.
| Route | Detail | Read on |
|---|---|---|
| Online | Online claim form, “Claim a customer’s savings after a bereavement”, without needing to create an online account | |
| Post | NS&I, Sunderland, SR43 2SBThe Sunderland address is for sending the completed paper claim form (NS&I 904). | |
| Phone, for help with a claim | 08085 007 007Main number, given in the claim form and 2022 guide for help with a claim. The claim form says calls from the UK are free. Team hours (contact page), not stated as bereavement hours: Monday to Friday 8am–8pm, Saturday and Sunday 8am–6pm, closed on bank holidays. | |
| From outside the UK | +44 1772 329880Their dedicated overseas number, charged at your phone provider’s international rate. | |
| Textphone (Text Relay) | Dial 18001 from your textphone, then the number you want to callTheir contact page says a Text Relay operator joins the call and communicates your written request to NS&I. It gives no Minicom number. Their June 2022 bereavement guide, April 2024 inherited ISA leaflet and July 2025 Premium Bonds brochure also say “Or call our Minicom service direct on 0800 056 0585”. |
These products have their own teams and numbers. Where each number was read is in the Sources list at the foot of this page.
Keep one line per call. If anything goes wrong later, this is what you will be asked for.
Letters to tell a bank, building society, insurer or pension provider about a death, ready to fill in. No account, no email needed.
A blank to fill in yourself. Not legal advice. Written for England and Wales.
Rather have it by email?
Take the notification letters with you.
We'll email you the notification letters as a PDF — for when you're at a printer, or to pass to the person who'll need it. The download above stays free either way.
Their bereavement page does not print an NS&I phone number. Their claim form (NS&I 904) and their 2022 bereavement guide both give 08085 007 007 for help with a claim, and the guide says to call it to ask for the form to be sent. It is NS&I’s main number: their pages do not give a separate line for bereavement.
Their extra-support page says to call 08085 007 007 free from the UK, and their claim form says calls from the UK are free. Their contact page gives these hours for speaking to their team on the main number: Monday to Friday 8am–8pm, and Saturday and Sunday 8am–6pm, closed on bank holidays. They are not stated as bereavement hours.
Their page says you must be legally entitled to claim the savings. Their claim form says who should claim: the surviving holder or trustee(s) if the savings were held jointly or in trust; the executor if there is a Will; the person appointed, or being appointed, to administer the estate if there is a Grant of Letters of Administration or (in Scotland) a Confirmation of Executor Dative; otherwise a relative, in the order of priority their form gives: widow, widower or surviving civil partner; children; parents; brother or sister; other relative or entitled person. The executor section of the form asks whether you have or are obtaining a Grant of Probate or (in Scotland) a Confirmation of Executor Nominate.
The paper form is their bereavement claims form, NS&I 904 (2023/01), titled “When an NS&I customer dies”. You can download it from their bereavement page, or, their 2022 guide says, call and ask them to send you one. The sections you fill in depend on the case: 1, 2, 5 and 6 for joint or trust savings and for a relative claiming with no Will and no Grant; 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 if there is a Will; 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 if there is a Grant of Letters of Administration or Confirmation of Executor Dative. Post the completed form to NS&I, Sunderland SR43 2SB.
How long NS&I takes to reply to a claim: its bereavement page says, under “Next steps”, that after you have made your claim they send a letter within 8 weeks explaining what you will need to do next. Under “Response times for current claims” it says response times temporarily worsened to 8 weeks over the spring and early summer, that they have now considerably improved the response time, and that they expect to be able to respond to new claims within their usual standard of 14 days by the end of October. Their claims update page, headed September 2026, repeats this in a section on response times.
Their list of what you need for an online claim does not include the death certificate. For a paper claim, their posting step asks you to send in the claim form, and says that if they need a copy of the death certificate (or, if there is a Will, the Will) they will contact you.
Grant of Representation: their page says they will tell you whether they need one once they have your completed claim form. They may ask for one if the customer’s total NS&I savings are £5,000 or over, and they say they reserve the right to ask for one for savings of any value. Their 2022 guide says a Grant is not usually required when the savings were held jointly or in trust.
If an account was held jointly, their claim form says it will now be held in the sole name of the remaining holder. If you want to close it, you give the account number on the claim form.
Premium Bonds can stay in the prize draw for 12 months after the date of death in the holder’s name, or be repaid. The claim form asks you to choose between the two (section 5b). Prizes won in that time are paid by warrant (like a cheque) to the person entitled to the money once the claim is completed, and they hold any earlier prizes until then. They cannot pay these prizes electronically or in one sum at the end of the 12 months. If a prize warrant was already sent to the person who died, send it back and they will reissue it. Their Tracing service brochure, produced July 2022, says that after the 12 months the Bonds are no longer eligible to win prizes.
Instead of asking for the money, you can keep some accounts by moving them into another person’s name. Their page lists the ones that can be transferred directly: Green Savings Bonds, Guaranteed Growth Bonds, Guaranteed Income Bonds, Index-linked Saving Certificates, Fixed Interest Savings Certificates and Income Bonds. Premium Bonds and Direct Saver accounts must be repaid before moving into another person’s name, and a Direct ISA cannot be transferred and must be repaid. All NS&I accounts keep earning interest until they are closed. Premium Bonds do not earn interest.
If a spouse or civil partner has died, you may be entitled to inherit an additional tax-free ISA allowance. Their inherited-allowance summary says you must make all deposits within three years of the date of death, or 180 days of the date the estate is settled, whichever is later.
Money for the funeral or Inheritance Tax: their June 2022 bereavement guide says they will usually pay part of the claim upfront for funeral expenses or Inheritance Tax, even if a Grant is needed but not yet obtained. That guide’s steps are: you confirm that no other funds are available to meet the funeral expenses or tax payable; they ask to see the unpaid funeral bill (they pay the funeral directors direct) or a letter from the tax office (they pay HMRC direct); and the executor or administrator signs a repayment form. Their current bereavement page does not mention this.
If you only have some details of the person’s NS&I savings, their 2022 guide says to tell them as much as you can about the savings and the person. If you are not sure what they held, it says to call 08085 007 007 and ask for the Tracing Service brochure, or download it from nsandi.com. They also run a Tracing Service, which aims to confirm any accounts within a month of receiving an application. The Tracing Service’s own paper request form, NS&I 789 (not the claim form NS&I 904), asks whether the holder is still alive and for the date of death, and goes to “Tracing Service, NS&I, Sunderland SR43 2SB”.
NS&I’s claims update page, headed September 2026, says that in some cases the estate of a customer who died did not receive all the money owed after a bereavement claim, because its search missed some accounts. If you have a recent or ongoing claim, its page says you do not need to do anything. It is writing to the estates affected, with a dedicated phone number on its letter, and expects to finish contacting estates in 2027.
NS&I’s bereavement page, under “Next steps” and “Response times for current claims”, and its claims update page headed September 2026: A letter within 8 weeks of the claim. Response times temporarily worsened to 8 weeks in the spring and early summer; they have now considerably improved the response time and expect to respond to new claims within their usual standard of 14 days by the end of October.
NS&I’s older documents: claim form NS&I 904 (2023/01) and bereavement guide NS&I 930 (produced June 2022): “within seven working days” (claim form NS&I 904, 2023/01) and “within 11 working days” (bereavement guide NS&I 930, produced June 2022).
Both are NS&I’s own. Read on 16 October 2026. If it matters to you, ask NS&I which applies.
NS&I’s contact page, under “Chat to us”: The virtual assistant is available 24/7; to chat to one of their team, 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 6pm Saturday and Sunday, closed on bank holidays. The page also says web chat can only answer general queries, and to call if you need to get in touch about your account.
NS&I’s claim form NS&I 904 (2023/01), an older document: “talk to us through our web chat service at nsandi.com from 7am to 10pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 8pm at the weekends”.
Both are NS&I’s own. Read on 16 October 2026. If it matters to you, ask NS&I which applies.
NS&I’s bereavement page (paper-form steps): Their posting step asks you to send in the claim form and says “If we require a copy of the death certificate, we will contact you”.
NS&I’s June 2022 bereavement guide, Step 1: The person claiming “needs to send” a registrar’s copy of the death certificate, gathered “to send with the claim form”.
Both are NS&I’s own. Read on 16 October 2026. If it matters to you, ask NS&I which applies.
NS&I’s bereavement page, “Prefer to send us everything by post?” steps: The paper-form steps for joint or trust savings say “The executor must have a registrar’s copy of the death certificate” and the Will.
NS&I’s claim form NS&I 904 (2023/01); the June 2022 guide says the same and adds that a Grant is not usually required: “The surviving holder or trustee(s) should complete sections 1, 2, 5 and 6”.
Both are NS&I’s own. Read on 16 October 2026. If it matters to you, ask NS&I which applies.
NS&I’s June 2022 bereavement guide, its Tracing Service page and its paper form NS&I 789 (2023/01): “use our Tracing Service before making a claim”, if you are not sure what savings the customer may have had (June 2022 guide). The Tracing Service page says you can ask for a trace for someone else if you are legally entitled to act for them, “for example under a Power of Attorney or as an Executor”, and its paper request form NS&I 789 asks whether the holder is still alive and for the date of death.
NS&I’s online tracing-form questions, shown on its Tracing Service page and its downloads-and-forms page: On the online tracing-form questions: “If the holder is deceased, please use our bereavement claim form”.
Both are NS&I’s own. Read on 16 October 2026. If it matters to you, ask NS&I which applies.
NS&I is not on GOV.UK’s list of organisations Tell Us Once notifies.
Tell Us Once does not tell banks, mortgage providers, insurance providers, companies the person had contracts with (such as utility companies, landlords or housing associations), or personal or workplace pension schemes other than the public sector ones it contacts. GOV.UK says you will need to contact organisations like these yourself, and lists other things you may also need to do: update the property records if the person owned land or property; contact DVLA if they owned a vehicle and you sell it, or keep it and tax it in your own name; contact HMRC if they owed business taxes like VAT; contact the Student Loans Company if they had a student loan; and contact DWP if a child or baby has died and you get benefits as their parent or carer.
Tell Us Once is available only if the person was living in England, Scotland or Wales. GOV.UK says it cannot be used if the person was living in Northern Ireland when they died, or living abroad permanently when they died.
Read from GOV.UK on 16 October 2026.
How Tell Us Once worksOne free online notification tells the member organisations you choose, at the same time.
NS&I is not on the Death Notification Service’s own list of members, so the service cannot tell NS&I for you. Read from its member list on 16 October 2026.
Notification only. Each member you choose updates its records and tells you the next steps. The service’s own FAQ says to expect that within 10 working days where a member holds a live account, and that a member holding no account will not write back.
Every route here was read from NS&I’s own pages on 16 October 2026, not from a directory or a search result. If this page and NS&I’s own page ever disagree, believe theirs.
SONAR is our own watch over the figures and links this site publishes. It can flag a change; it cannot edit this page. A person re-reads NS&I’s page and re-dates it.
Is something here wrong? Tell us
Valoren is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting as agent for any organisation listed. We record each organisation's own published route.