Average UK Savings 2026: FCA Financial Lives Survey

The detail

The FCA Financial Lives 2024 survey interviewed 17,950 UK adults, with fieldwork between 5 February and 16 June 2024, and was published on 16 May 2025. It found that 90% of UK adults had cash savings but only 35% held investments. Among adults with cash savings, the median amount held fell in the £5,000 to £5,999 band. That is the median of savers, not of all adults: it leaves out the one in ten with no cash savings.

The FCA reports medians as bands because many respondents do not know, or will not say, exactly how much they hold; for investible assets (cash savings plus investments) about a quarter answered "don't know" or "prefer not to say". So the FCA gives a range for each band: between 7% and 10% of adults had no investible assets at all, unchanged from 2022. Excluding the non-answers, 29% had no investible assets or less than £1,000, and 43% had £10,000 or more. The median band for all adults was £5,000 to under £10,000.

Savings rise steeply with age. On the same basis, 44% of adults aged 18-24 had no investible assets or less than £1,000, against 14% of 65-74s and 9% of those aged 75 and over. The median band runs from £1,000 to under £2,000 for 18-24s up to £50,000 to under £100,000 for the over-75s. Women had lower holdings than men: 33% of women and 25% of men were in the nil-or-under-£1,000 group.

These are survey estimates of what adults say they hold, not bank data, and they measure individuals rather than households. The next Financial Lives wave will update them; until then, the 2024 survey is the most recent FCA picture of UK savings.