Committee publication · Correspondence · 15 July 2026

Correspondence from NS&I on NS&I bereavement claims issue update, dated 14 July 2026

Summary

NS&I writes to the Treasury Committee updating on its bereavement claims operational issue, where deceased customers' estates were not always fully repaid across all accounts. The search process failed to identify all NS&I products. NS&I has fixed the issue for new claims from January 2026, deployed 100 extra staff, and is remediating past errors, though this has caused processing delays. The 2025–26 accounts will be published in autumn and will be qualified due to a breach of the Annually Managed Expenditure allocation.

Key findings

NS&I's search process for bereavement claims failed to identify all customer products, resulting in incomplete repayment of deceased customers' estates; the issue was identified in March 2026.
Independent experts reviewed over 34 million records to identify and correct historical claims; the National Audit Office is now auditing this work as part of the end-year audit.
A new, more robust process introduced in January 2026 has resolved the issue for ongoing and new claims but has caused delays; NS&I has added 100 staff to return to normal service levels by autumn 2026.
Remediation of past errors requires a provision that breaches NS&I's Annually Managed Expenditure allocation for 2025–26, resulting in qualified accounts.
NS&I's 2025–26 Annual Report and Accounts will be published in autumn, later than usual but ahead of the statutory deadline, due to late reporting of the issue in late March.

Tone

Factual

Topics

public-financecustomer-protectionpensions-and-benefitsaudit-and-accounts

Key actors

Dame Meg Hillier MP, Sir Jim Harra KCB, NS&I, National Audit Office, HM Treasury, Minister for Pensions

Notable line

“… the search process used when handling a bereavement claim failed to identify all NS&I products.”

Key Quotes

“On 26 March 2026, the Minister for Pensions informed Parliament that NS&I had identified an issue where the estates of deceased customers were not always repaid money from all of their accounts following a bereavement claim.”
— Sir Jim Harra KCB · Initial disclosure of the bereavement claims issue

“These errors happened because the search process used when handling a bereavement claim failed to identify all NS&I products.”
— Sir Jim Harra KCB · Root cause of the operational error

“The new, more robust process, introduced in January 2026, takes longer than before to carry out and this has unfortunately resulted in delays for ongoing and new claims.”
— Sir Jim Harra KCB · Explanation of processing delays from remediation process

“… remediating the bereavement claims issue requires a provision to be included in our Resource Account which has resulted in a breach of NS&I's Annually Managed Expenditure allocation for 2025-26, meaning our Accounts will be qualified.”
— Sir Jim Harra KCB · Financial impact and accounts qualification

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Source · parliament.uk record ↗