#1451 1956 · National Savings and Investments (UK) · government retail savings
Britain Pays Interest on Savings as a Monthly Lottery
问题
Post-war Britain needed small savers, but plain interest moved nobody; the football pools did.
背景
In April 1956 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan announced Premium Savings Bonds to encourage saving after World War II. They launched on November 1, 1956 in Trafalgar Square under the byline 'Savings with a Thrill!'. Macmillan reasoned the bonds 'will appeal to those who are not attracted by the rewards of interest, but do respond to the incentives of fortune.'
The program is administered by National Savings and Investments. Each £1 invested allocates a bond number into a monthly drawing run by the ERNIE machine, with a holding cap of £30,000 per individual; winnings are exempt from UK income and capital gains tax. In 1956 the top prize was £1,000. Prizes are funded from the pooled interest on the whole fund.
换别人会怎么做
Raise the interest rate, or advertise saving as a civic duty.
他们看到了什么
Small savers buy dreams, not basis points. Pool the interest into a monthly prize draw and the same money buys hope, while protected principal makes it a bet even cautious households can hold.
那一手
NS&I pays no interest to any individual holder. Instead it pools the interest earned on the entire fund into a monthly prize pool and draws winning bond numbers, while principal remains always repayable. A saver trades basis points of expected return for a lottery ticket on every pound, and the state raises debt funding from people who would never open a conventional savings account for interest.
为什么管用
Probability weighting makes a small chance of a large prize worth more than a certain fraction of a percent; full principal protection removes the fear that stops saving at all; the monthly draw gives saving the rhythm and suspense of the football pools.
值了多少
By 2004-05, 19% of British families held Premium Bonds, with demand tracking the prize rate and top prize (NBER analysis of survey data).
什么时候会失灵
It fails for savers who compute expected value: the prize rate has generally run below comparable government rates, so rational money leaves; and where lotteries offer better odds or jackpots, the thrill premium evaporates.
后来呢
The standing template for prize-linked savings, the family of products since analyzed and piloted worldwide in the economics literature on household finance.
资料来源
- [1]Making Savers Winners: An Overview of Prize-Linked Savings Products (NBER Working Paper 16433)National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010nber.org