National Insurance Number
In order to administer the National Insurance system, a National Insurance number is allocated to every child in the United Kingdom shortly before their 16th birthday. A number is also given to younger children for whom Child Benefit is paid. People coming from overseas have to apply for an NI number before they can qualify for benefits, though holding an NI number is not a prerequisite for working in the UK.
An NI number is in the format: two letters, six digits, and one further letter or a space. The example used is typically AB123456C. It is usual to pair off the digits - such separators are seen on forms used by government departments (both internal and external, notably the P45 and P60).
Read more about this topic: National Insurance
Famous quotes containing the words national, insurance and/or number:
“The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease?”
—J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)
“For there can be no whiter whiteness than this one:
An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)