Top decile pension wealth by gender

Please note

Top decile pension wealth by gender data download has been updated on 26 September 2023 to add a date of publication to the excel file.

FOI REF: FOI-2023-1337

You asked

In line with a recent FOI request from RBC Brewin Dolphin which resulted in the following article: One saver has built a £11m pension - and 46,000 people have retirement pots of more than £3m | This is Money Please may you provide me with: The gender split (i.e. the number of men and women) of the 46,000 investors mentioned in the article who have a pension product with a value of over £3million. If possible, we would also like the same gender split for the 128,000 investors mentioned in the article who have a pension product with a value of £2million to £3million. We would also like to know what the gender split is for the 1.1 million investors mentioned in the article who have a pension product with a value of over £1million. If possible, we would like the data shown in both real figures and percentages.

We said

Thank you for your query regarding top decile pension wealth breakdown released as part of a previous FOI request.

We have provided the data identified in your request by gender in the associated download named 'Pension wealth top decile by gender.xls'. The data are from the Wealth and Assets Survey covering the period April 2018 to March 2020. 

Please note that percentages and weighted totals for '£2 million or over and less than £3 million' and '£3 million or over' have been suppressed because they are based on 30 unweighted cases. At this threshold we would not have confidence in the statistical reliability of these particular estimates. Releasing this data would therefore confuse public understanding on this topic and would contradict the Trustworthiness pillar of the Code of Practice for Statistics, which is at the centre of our public duties.

This information has therefore been withheld under Section 36(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), whereby information is exempt from release if to do so would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.

We understand and appreciate the public interest in the transparency around the information we hold, particularly data pertinent to the cost of living. However, it would not be in the public interest to produce information that would mislead and confuse public understanding in this topic. We must uphold our responsibility to produce reliable, accurate information on this topic that enhances understanding.

Furthermore, we must consider the damage that releasing such poor-quality information would have to the trust the public and government have in our statistical outputs. Such a reduction in public trust means that they would no longer be able to rely on our data when making decisions. Such decisions would no longer benefit from accurate, well-informed statistical information, reducing their quality and effectiveness.

On balance, the public interest falls in favour of withholding the requested information in this instance. 

The Wealth and Pensions Team would be happy to discuss any further questions or analytical requests directly at wealthandassetssurvey@ons.gov.uk.