Britain has four completely different pension systems — one of them holds no investment fund at all
Private-sector defined benefit, defined contribution and master trusts, the Local Government Pension Scheme, and the unfunded public-service schemes that pay pensions straight out of today's budget. Blending them into one number hides more than it reveals.
"Britain's pensions" is not one pot. Private-sector defined benefit schemes, defined contribution master trusts and the Local Government Pension Scheme each hold genuine, invested funds — tracked by different regulators, on different bases. NHS, Teachers, Civil Service, Armed Forces and Police pensions hold none: employers pay a set contribution rate straight into general government revenue, and pensions are paid from that same revenue when due.
Adding these figures into a single “UK pensions” total would mix genuinely invested money with a government promise backed by nothing but future taxation — which is why this page tracks each one separately rather than blending them.
Read this first — what else changes the meaning of the headline
- Unfunded scheme liabilities (NHS, Teachers, Civil Service, Armed Forces, Police)
- £1.4tn
The second-largest UK government liability after gilts. A LIABILITY, not an investable pot — never add this to the funded totals below, which measure a completely different thing (money actually invested vs a pay-as-you-go promise).
- Private-sector DB assets (funded)
- £1,068.1bn
As at 31 March 2025 — genuinely invested money, PPF-eligible schemes only, not every DB scheme in the UK.
Pension Protection Fund, Purple Book
- The State Pension
- Not on this page
The universal State Pension — the one most people think of first — is a separate system again: how it is funded pay-as-you-go, what the triple lock has actually cost, and whether pensioners are doing OK are covered on /pensions, not folded in here as a fifth category.
- Master trust (DC) growth
- £22bn → £208bn
2011 to 2025 — the fastest-growing of the three funded pots, and the one where future retirees increasingly carry the investment risk themselves.
The Pensions Regulator
DB pension scheme assets (PPF-eligible)
Private-sector DB pension assets — the largest of the three genuinely funded pots on this page — reached £1,068.1bn as at 31 March 2025.
View data table
| Year | DB pension scheme assets (PPF-eligible) |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 769.5 |
| 2011 | 968.5 |
| 2016 | 1341.4 |
| 2017 | 1541.1 |
| 2018 | 1573.3 |
| 2019 | 1615.3 |
| 2020 | 1700.6 |
| 2021 | 1720.7 |
| 2022 | 1666.9 |
| 2023 | 1238.4 |
| 2024 | 1167.1 |
| 2025 | 1068.1 |
United Kingdom · Source: Pension Protection Fund, The Purple Book · series Figure 4.2 — Total assets (£bn) · as of 2025
Funded: private-sector defined benefit (PPF Purple Book)
The Pension Protection Fund publishes the definitive annual survey of private-sector DB schemes eligible for its protection — not every DB scheme in the UK (see the caveat on each chart), but the most complete, consistent series available. Its "de-risking" story is one of the biggest shifts in UK institutional investing this century: as schemes have matured and their funding positions have improved, trustees have sold equities and bought bonds (including Liability-Driven Investment) to lock in that funding rather than risk losing it to a market downturn.
DB pension asset allocation — the "de-risking" shift
Equities fell from 61.1% of assets in 2006 to 15.1% in 2025; bonds (including LDI) rose from 28.3% to 70.6%.
View data table
| Year | Equities | Bonds (incl. LDI) | Other investments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 61.1 | 28.3 | 10.6 |
| 2011 | 41.1 | 40.1 | 18.8 |
| 2016 | 30.3 | 51.3 | 18.4 |
| 2017 | 29 | 55.7 | 15.3 |
| 2018 | 27 | 59 | 14 |
| 2019 | 24 | 62.8 | 13.2 |
| 2020 | 20.4 | 69.2 | 10.4 |
| 2021 | 19 | 72 | 9.1 |
| 2022 | 19.5 | 71.6 | 8.9 |
| 2023 | 18.8 | 66.5 | 14.7 |
| 2024 | 15.5 | 69.8 | 14.7 |
| 2025 | 15.1 | 70.6 | 14.3 |
United Kingdom · Source: Pension Protection Fund, The Purple Book · as of 2025
Coverage: PPF-eligible private-sector (and some hybrid) schemes only — excludes unfunded public-sector schemes, some funded public-sector schemes such as LGPS (shown separately below), schemes with a Crown Minister guarantee, schemes with fewer than two members, and schemes wound up before 6 April 2005. The Purple Book itself notes that figures for 2023 onward use updated valuation assumptions and are not directly comparable with earlier years — trend direction remains informative.
Defined contribution & master trusts
Where master trust default funds invest
Source: The Pensions Regulator (TPR), Master trust asset allocation 2026, 2026 report (2025 disclosed default assets).
Growth of trust-based DC
£22bn (2011)
→
£208bn (2025, master trusts only)
Two real, separately-cited figures spanning 2011–2025, not points on one continuous comparable series (the 2011 figure is all non-micro occupational DC trust schemes; the 2025 figure is master trusts specifically, which did not yet dominate the market in 2011) — shown as "how big DC has become", not as a smooth growth line.
Master trust default-fund glidepath
Default funds hold roughly three-quarters equities thirty years from retirement, falling to around a quarter at retirement as bonds and cash rise to protect the pot.
View data table
| Period | Equities | Bonds | Infrastructure | Property | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 years to retirement | 77 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| 5 years to retirement | 43 | 44 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| At retirement | 26 | 56 | 2 | 2 | 9 |
United Kingdom · Source: The Pensions Regulator (TPR), Master trust asset allocation 2026 · as of 2026 report (2025 disclosed default assets)
Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
LGPS is a FUNDED public-sector scheme covering council and other local-government-connected staff in England & Wales — unlike the unfunded schemes below, it holds a genuine, diversified investment portfolio spread across 87 individual funds, increasingly pooled into eight investment pools.
LGPS asset allocation
Equities and bonds still dominate, but infrastructure and private equity together are worth over £50bn — the two harder-to-reverse, long-horizon asset classes most tied to real-economy investment.
View data table
| Year | Equities | Bonds | Property | Infrastructure | Private equity | Private debt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 49.4 | 15.8 | 7.4 | 6.1 | 6.1 | 2.8 |
| 2024 | 48.4 | 16.4 | 8.1 | 6.4 | 6.1 | 3.1 |
England & Wales · Source: LGPS Scheme Advisory Board, Scheme Annual Report 2025 · as of 2024-25
LGPS total assets (England & Wales)
LGPS total assets reached £402.3bn in FY2024-25.
View data table
| Year | LGPS total assets (England & Wales) |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 337110.557 |
| 2021 | 364042.367 |
| 2022 | 359183.584 |
| 2023 | 391545.895 |
| 2024 | 402321.213 |
England & Wales · Source: Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG), Local government pension scheme funds for England and Wales · series Table 2 — Market value of funds at end of year · as of 2024-25
How much of that is invested in the UK?
Covers only four asset categories (UK listed equities, UK government bonds, UK infrastructure, UK private equity) reported voluntarily by 67 of the 87 LGPS funds in England & Wales — not a complete UK-vs-overseas split of the whole portfolio, and only the second year this table has been published. Treat as directionally useful, not a robust or comprehensive figure. Only 67 of 87 LGPS funds included this table in their 2024-25 annual report.
Unfunded public service pensions — NHS, Teachers, Civil Service, Armed Forces, Police
| Scheme | Employer contribution rate | Previous rate | Effective from | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NHS Pension Scheme Health (England & Wales) | 23.7% | 20.6% | 1 Apr 2024 | GAD 2020 actuarial valuation |
| Teachers' Pension Scheme Education (England & Wales) | 28.68% | 23.68% | 1 Apr 2024 | GAD 2020 actuarial valuation |
| Civil Service Pension Scheme (alpha) Civil Service | 28.97% | — | 1 Apr 2024 | GAD 2020 actuarial valuation |
| Armed Forces Pension Scheme Armed Forces | 73.5% | 65.5% | 1 Apr 2024 | GAD 2020 actuarial valuation |
| Police Pension Scheme Police (England & Wales) | 35.3% | 31% | 1 Apr 2024 | GAD 2020 actuarial valuation |
Sources, per scheme: NHS Pension Scheme (NHS Employers); Teachers' Pension Scheme (Teachers' Pensions (administered on behalf of the Department for Education)); Civil Service Pension Scheme (alpha) (Civil Service Pension Scheme); Armed Forces Pension Scheme (GOV.UK / Government Actuary’s Department); Police Pension Scheme (Home Office / legislation.gov.uk).
What four systems still doesn't tell you about retirement in Britain
Even after separating funded from unfunded and DB from DC, several real gaps remain in what this page — or any single page — can tell you about whether Britain's retirement provision is adequate.
The unfunded liability is a promise, not a pot — and it dwarfs the funded totals
The State Pension — the one most people mean by "pension" — sits entirely outside this page
The DC glidepath describes the default fund, not every saver
Source: The Pensions Regulator (TPR)
None of these totals says whether retirement provision is adequate
What it means
- What the data directly shows
- Britain's occupational and public-service pension provision splits into at least four genuinely different systems, each with its own regulator, data source and coverage limits — three hold real invested assets, one holds none.
- What can reasonably be inferred
- The long-run shift from defined benefit to defined contribution (and the LGPS's parallel move into infrastructure and private markets) means future UK pension income increasingly depends on investment returns that individual savers, not employers, bear the risk of.
- What is disputed
- How much UK pension capital could realistically be redirected into domestic investment without breaching trustees' fiduciary duty to get members the best return is contested — see Invest in Britain, linked below.
- A political judgement, not a finding
- Whether unfunded public-service pensions should build a real investment fund, as some other countries do, or continue paying pensions from current revenue is a political and fiscal choice, not something this data resolves.
- What the evidence cannot establish
- This data cannot establish a single 'right' way to add these four pots together, or predict future investment returns for any of the funded schemes.
What can change this
Direct more pension capital into UK assets
Proposed policyWhere DB, DC and LGPS funds choose to invest — currently a large share sits in overseas assets.
- Evidence:
- LGPS UK exposure: £68.6bn (17% of LGPS assets), covering the categories this data can measure.
- Expected effect:
- More domestic investment capital, if adopted at scale.
- Time horizon:
- Years — pension funds rebalance slowly and deliberately.
- Trade-offs:
- Trustees have a fiduciary duty to members’ returns first; a mandate to invest domestically could conflict with that duty if it were not also the best available return.
- Unknowns:
- How much of current overseas allocation is genuinely re-directable without a return penalty.
Continue LGPS pooling into fewer, larger investment pools
Current policyLGPS assets are already consolidating from 87 individual funds into 8 investment pools, which can access asset classes (infrastructure, private equity) individual funds could not efficiently reach alone.
- Evidence:
- LGPS asset allocation chart above: infrastructure and private equity together exceed £50bn.
- Expected effect:
- Lower costs and access to a wider opportunity set as pooling completes.
- Time horizon:
- Ongoing — pooling is ahead of, but not complete for, every fund.
- Trade-offs:
- Some loss of individual-fund control over allocation decisions.
- Unknowns:
- The pace at which the remaining funds complete pooling.
Build a funded reserve for unfunded public-service schemes
External optionNHS, Teachers, Civil Service, Armed Forces and Police pensions would hold an actual investment fund instead of paying pensions from current tax revenue.
- Evidence:
- 5 schemes currently unfunded — see the table above for each scheme's contribution rate.
- Expected effect:
- Would reduce the schemes’ exposure to future demographic and fiscal pressure, at a large upfront transition cost.
- Time horizon:
- Decades — building a comparable fund from scratch is a multi-generation undertaking.
- Trade-offs:
- The transition cost (paying today’s pensioners while also funding a new reserve) is very large and is not currently government policy.
- Unknowns:
- No government has published a costed transition plan for this option.
▸How this is calculated, and what "evidence class" means
- A — Observed official statistic — LGPS total assets (MHCLG), UK share-ownership figures elsewhere on this site.
- B — Official/admin statistic with methodological limitations — PPF Purple Book (DB assets/allocation), LGPS asset allocation and UK exposure (Scheme Advisory Board), TPR master trust/DC figures, unfunded-scheme employer contribution rates.
Every figure on this page traces to a named publication with a direct link (click any chart's source line, or the links in the tables above). Where a source covers only part of the market — DC/master trusts, LGPS UK exposure — that is stated plainly next to the figure, not left for a reader to discover elsewhere.