Black British households are among the country’s most active investors and among its least wealthy. This Black History Month, the question is not whether the community saves and invests. The dreaming is not in doubt. The question is why so little of it is turned into the kind of planning that compounds.
The numbers
The most recent official breakdown of household wealth by ethnicity, from the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, put median wealth at £314,000 for White British households and £34,000 for Black African households, the lowest of any group. White British households were around nine times as likely to sit in the top fifth of the wealth distribution. When the figures were published, one platform analyst called it not a gap but a chasm. The rest of the data explains why.
| Measure | Black African | Black Caribbean | White British |
|---|---|---|---|
| Households holding property wealth (2016–18) | 29% | 39% | 69% |
| Median net property wealth (2016–18) | £0 | £0 | £115,000 |
| Households holding private pension wealth (2016–18) | 59% | 70% | 82% |
| Households whose financial debts exceed financial assets (2016–18) | 44% | 34% | 22% |
| Home ownership, England (2021–23) | 22% | 31% | 70% |
| Average inheritance per person, two years to 2020 | Typically nil | £778 | £3,068 |
Sources: ONS; English Housing Survey via Ethnicity Facts and Figures; Resolution Foundation.
Read the rows together, and the pattern is plain. British wealth is held overwhelmingly in two places: the family home and the pension. Those are the two assets Black households are least likely to own. Median property wealth for both Black African and Black Caribbean households is zero. Median private pension wealth for Black African households is under £5,000, against £80,000 for White British households.
Part of the gap is age. Black African and Black Caribbean households are disproportionately young, and wealth builds with time. But age does not explain inheriting nothing. Nor does it explain the Resolution Foundation’s finding that at least half of Black African and Black Caribbean households entered the pandemic with less than £1,000 in savings. Wealth is inherited as well as earned, and the starting line is not shared evenly.
A word on the data itself. The ONS’s dedicated analysis of wealth by ethnicity covers April 2016 to March 2018 and was published in November 2020. Nearly a decade later, it remains the latest. For a gap of this size, that is not good enough. What isn’t measured isn’t managed.
Engagement is not the problem
The familiar explanation is that some communities are simply disengaged from investing. But the evidence points the other way. Scottish Widows’ 2024 research found that 47% of Black respondents invest outside their pension in property, shares, bonds, or other assets, compared with 37% of White British respondents.
Black women were more likely than White women to hold stocks and shares: 34% versus 21%. City Hive’s work on the ethnicity investment gap found Black respondents the most engaged and proactive about their financial futures of any group it surveyed.
The pension picture is the reverse. The same Scottish Widows research found only 18% of Black women actively saving into a pension. Its 2022 Retirement Report found that a quarter of Black Britons have no personal or workplace pension. The Social Market Foundation found that among middle earners, on household incomes of £30,000 to £60,000, 22% of ethnic minority workers hold a private pension. At the same income level across the population, the figure is 48%.
That is the paradox: plenty of dreaming, too little of the planning that pays off over decades. Appetite and effort are high, but people underuse the tax-advantaged, employer-subsidised wrappers that build wealth over a working life. Engagement without access to transparent, affordable, regulated advice is also exactly the market that unregulated schemes and social-media “opportunities” are built to serve.
Enterprise without capital
The same pattern runs through business. Research by the Federation of Small Businesses and Aston University’s Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship found that nearly 30% of the ethnic minority population had been involved in planning, starting or running a business, almost twice the rate of the wider population. Ethnic minority-led firms contributed up to £25 billion a year to the UK economy, roughly the output of Greater Manchester. They were more innovative too: 30% had recently launched a new product or service, 11 percentage points more than white-led firms.
Capital has not followed. Extend Ventures’ data shows Black founders received 0.24% of UK venture capital between 2009 and 2019. Their share peaked at 1.13% in 2021, during a record year for UK tech investment, and slipped back to 0.95% in 2023. Between 2019 and 2023, 13 Black women raised venture funding, compared to more than 3,700 white men. Women-only founding teams of any ethnicity received just 2% of UK venture investment by value in 2022, according to the British Business Bank; for Black women, the share is a fraction of that.
For a founder with no family wealth and no property to borrow against, the lack of outside capital means building slowly, from earnings. It is the same constraint that holds back household wealth, seen from the other side of the balance sheet.
What would close the gap?
No single policy undoes a gap built over generations. Four changes would move it, and three of them are about transparency and cost.
- Publish the data. An updated ONS release on wealth by ethnicity, and ethnicity breakdowns in pension-scheme and investment-platform data, would show whether anything is changing. Firms that serve these customers should be willing to report on them.
- Bring the planning in earlier. The powers to auto-enrol workers from age 18, and to pay contributions from the first pound earned, have been on the statute book since 2023. Using them would reach precisely the younger, lower-paid workers now outside the system. The self-employed, a large share of this entrepreneurial community, need an equivalent.
- Cut the cost of investing. Smaller pots, started later, have the least room to absorb charges. On a portfolio returning 5% a year before costs, paying 1.5% a year rather than 0.5% leaves the pot roughly a fifth smaller after 25 years. Disclose every cost upfront, in pounds and pence.
- Make regulated guidance easy to find. The appetite for investing is already there. Regulated, fee-transparent help must reach people where unregulated pitches already do.
Black History Month rightly celebrates achievement. The wealth data reminds us that achievement and assets are not the same, and that assets pass to the next generation. Dreams start businesses. Plans build estates.
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Gina Miller
Co-Founder SCM Direct
Winner of Most Influential Person of Caribbean & African Heritage — Powerlist Foundation, 2017
Capital at risk. The value of investments, and any income from them, can fall as well as rise, and you may get back less than you invest. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may change. SCM Direct is a trading name of SCM Private LLP, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 497525).
Sources
- ONS, Household wealth by ethnicity, Great Britain: April 2016 to March 2018
- interactive investor, Household wealth data reveals “ethnic wealth chasm”
- Resolution Foundation, Wealth gaps between different ethnic groups are large and likely to persist
- Ethnicity Facts and Figures, Home ownership
- University of Stirling, Racial inequalities affect home ownership (Jan 2026)
- Scottish Widows, Black women lead the charge with a renewed focus on investing
- Pensions Age, Scottish Widows research on pension inequalities in the Black community
- Financial Planning Today, SMF research on the ethnic pension gap
- Portfolio Adviser, City Hive ethnicity investment gap research
- The Voice, FSB/CREME Unlocking Opportunity report
- CNBC via NBC, Extend Ventures data on Black British founders (Jan 2025)
- Sifted, Extend Ventures 2009–2019 data
- British Business Bank, No improvement in the share of venture capital investment to female founder teams over the past decade
