Pension wealth in the UK

​FOI Ref: FOI/2022/4031

You asked

I would like to make some enquiries relating to pension wealth in the UK.

1. Is it possible to know how many £1million pensions holders there are in the UK? (i.e., people with pension pots that are £1million or over).

2. Is it possible to provide a breakdown of these to show how many million pound pension holders are Relief at Source, Net Pay Schemes, SIPPS, or a mix of these?

3. Is it possible to provide a pension millionaire spread (i.e., how many pension holders are £1m-£1,999,999, £2million-£2,999,999, £3million- £3,999,000, £4million-£4,999,999 and so forth)

4. In addition to those obvious brackets, is it also possible to provide a figure as to how many pensions are valued in excess of the current lifetime allowance of £1,073,100?

5. Is it possible to know how many of these million-pound pension holders are actively contributing, how many are preserved pension wealth, and how many are in some kind of drawdown or have taken a lump sum?

6. How many pension holders are there in total? (so I can work out what the millionaires are as a percentage)

7. Does data exist which gives an overall breakdown of RAS pension holder numbers of v Net Pay holder numbers of v SIPP holder numbers, and those having more than one of these?

We said

Thank you for your request.

The Wealth and Assets Survey provides estimates of the value of private pension wealth for private households in Great Britain.

We hold data on the distribution of private pension wealth and its components for adults and households, with the latest estimates covering the period April 2018 to March 2020:

Pension wealth, July 2006 to June 2016 and April 2014 to March 2020 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

Data relating to individual private pension and formal financial assets wealth by age band for the period April 2016 to March 2018 has been published as an ad-hoc analysis table:

Individuals with formal financial assets and private pension wealth by banded age, Great Britain: April 2016 to March 2018

Table 2 shows that for the period April 2016 to March 2018, 1,032,000 individuals (2%) in Great Britain were estimated to have private pension wealth worth £1,000,000 or more. The total number of individuals is also shown on this table (49,179,000): Private pension wealth includes active/current pensions, preserved/retained pensions and those pensions that are in payment.

The breakdown of the type of pensions creating this wealth (active, preserved, in payment) for individuals with at least £1,000,000 is not published within this table.

The number of individuals with higher banded private pension wealth has not been produced, e.g., more than £1,073,100, £1m-£1,999,999, £2million-£2,999,999, £3million- £3,999,000, £4million-£4,999,999 and so forth.

However, the information you have requested for questions 3, 4 and 5 is available to order as bespoke analysis from our ONS Wealth and Assets survey customer service team. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact wealth.and.assets.survey@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there will be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.

As this information is reasonably accessible via another route, even if only accessible on payment, Section 21(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/publicationscheme.

The Wealth and Assets Survey does not hold data on Relief at Source, Net Pay Schemes or SIPPS.

HM Revenue and Customs publish data on cost of pension tax and National Insurance contributions relief.