Information on millionaire pensions - March 2022


Reference Case Number: FOI9097

Freedom of Information: Right to know request:

  1. Is it possible to know how many £1million pensions there are in the UK? (ie £1million or over)
  2. How many pensions are there in total (not including the state pension)? (so I can work out what the millionaires are as a percentage)
  3. Is it possible to provide a pension millionaire spread (ie how many are between £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 give a further breakdown showing millionaire workplace pensions Vs millionaire SIPPs?
  6. Is it possible to know how many millionaire pensions have been subject to drawdown or lump sum withdrawal, and how many are as yet untouched?
  7. Do any figures exist for millionaire annuities? ie People who turned a £1million+ pension into an annuity of some kind?

FCA response:

Questions 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7

The FCA holds data relating to pensions schemes operated by FCA authorised firms, which include SIPPs providers, and life insurance firms offering contract-based pension schemes (including personal pensions and workplace pension schemes). We do not hold data on trust-based schemes regulated by The Pensions Regulator. The data the FCA holds does not include data relating to the value of individual long-term pension contracts, therefore we are unable to answer your question as to how many SIPPs or individual and workplace pensions are worth over £1m or over.

Question 2

Taking the data from regulatory returns as at June 2021, there are approximately 39.03 million direct contribution pensions.