🇧🇪 Belgium·ECB household survey · 2023
Am I rich in Belgium, if you don't count the house?
Type what your household holds in savings and investments. Property and state pension entitlements stay out of it.
My household holds € in savings and investments.
Count bank and savings deposits, mutual funds, bonds, listed shares, voluntary pension plans and whole life insurance, and money owed to you. Leave out the home, other property, vehicles, business equity, and entitlements from state or workplace pension schemes.
Households in Belgium you hold more than
50%
Above the middle
Past the €39,700 median. Worth remembering how low that bar sits: half of all holders are below it.
€39,700 is right at the €39,700 median for Belgium. Half of the households that hold any financial assets sit below that line, and half above it.
The published ladder
Where savings and investments actually sit in Belgium.
Among the 99.7% of households in Belgium that hold any financial asset, the median total is €39,700 and the mean is €115,500. The gap between them is the story: a small number of large portfolios pull the average far above the middle. Across the euro area the median is €16,600.
Tenth percentile
€2K
A tenth of the households with any financial assets in Belgium hold no more than this.
Median
€40K
Half hold less than this. The mean is €116K, which is what a handful of large portfolios does to an average.
Ninetieth percentile
€283K
The top tenth in Belgium starts here. The survey publishes nothing above it, so there is no top 1% number.
€39,700 places you above 50% of the households in Belgium that hold any financial asset.
Against the euro area as a whole you would be above 66% rather than 50%.
Who owns what
Almost every household in Belgium has a bank account. After that it thins out fast.
26.4% of households in Belgium hold mutual funds and 12.6% own listed shares directly, against 14.2% and 11.4% across the euro area. Deposits are close to universal everywhere. Everything below them is a minority position, and that is what makes the medians in the next column so much larger than the median for the whole country.
Asset
Households owning
Median among owners
DepositsBE2
99.6%
€19,400Euro area: 99.1% own it
Mutual fundsBE2
26.4%
€40,700Euro area: 14.2% own it
BondsBE2
5.0%
€20,000Euro area: 3.5% own it
Listed sharesBE2
12.6%
€10,000Euro area: 11.4% own it
Money owed to the householdBE2
8.3%
€5,000Euro area: 6.6% own it
Voluntary pension and life insuranceBE2
44.7%
€16,300Euro area: 27.5% own it
Other financial assetsBE2
6.6%
€9,200Euro area: 11.2% own it
Ownership is compared with the euro-area rate on every row. Medians are among the households that own that asset, so a large median tells you nothing about how common the asset is.
- Financial assets in Belgium were imputed as a single block rather than item by item (note BE2), so the total is firmer than the split between the items.
Where the money sits
What financial wealth in Belgium is actually made of.
45.3% of financial wealth in Belgium sits in deposits, against 44.1% across the euro area, and 11.4% sits in voluntary pension plans and life insurance. The mix decides how much of it is invested at all, which over a decade matters more than the total.
Deposits (BE2)45.3% · EA 44.1%
Mutual funds (BE2)27.1% · EA 13.3%
Bonds (BE2)2.3% · EA 3.0%
Listed shares (BE2)6.6% · EA 9.7%
Money owed to the household (BE2)2.0% · EA 1.8%
Voluntary pension and life insurance (BE2)11.4% · EA 18.3%
Other financial assets (BE2)5.2% · EA 9.8%
Shares of the total financial assets held by households in Belgium. Where the survey published no figure, the item is left out rather than drawn as zero.
The other half
What happens when you put the house back in.
Financial assets are 24.8% of everything households in Belgium own. The other 75.2% is real: property above all, plus vehicles, valuables and business equity. Across the euro area the financial share is 20.7%. This is the number behind the question in the title, and for most households it means the majority of their wealth cannot be spent without selling where they live.
Financial
24.8%
Everything on this page, as a share of total household assets in Belgium.
Real
75.2%
Property, vehicles, valuables and business equity in Belgium, none of which a monthly statement tracks.
Euro area, financial
20.7%
The euro-area financial share is 20.7%, against 24.8% in Belgium.
Three numbers and an outlier
What these numbers look like from the outside.
Households with a voluntary pension or life insurance
44.7%, the highest of the 8 countries here
44.7% of households in Belgium hold a voluntary pension plan or whole life insurance. These sit outside the state and workplace schemes, so the rate reflects what households choose to add rather than what they are enrolled in.
Households with any financial assets
99.7%
Every percentile on this page is measured among these households. The remaining 0.3% in Belgium hold nothing at all, and the survey publishes no distribution for them.
Own listed shares directly
12.6%
Against 11.4% across the euro area. Another 26.4% of households in Belgium hold mutual funds, which is the other way into the same markets.
Median financial assets
€39,700
Among households in Belgium that hold any. The euro-area median is €16,600.
Now put the house back in
Property, vehicles and business equity are the other 75.2% of what households own. See where your whole balance sheet lands.
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Frequently asked questions
Among the 99.7% of households in Belgium that hold any financial asset, the median is €39,700 and the mean is €115,500, 2.9 times higher (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C3). The mean is the wrong number to measure yourself against: a small number of large portfolios lifts it, while the median describes the household in the middle. The euro-area median is €16,600. That median is the second highest of the ten euro-area countries covered here, behind Luxembourg.
€282,800 (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C3). That is the ninetieth percentile among households holding any financial asset, and it is the highest threshold the survey publishes: there is no top 5% or top 1% figure in these tables, so any such number quoted for this survey has been extrapolated by someone rather than measured. At the other end, a tenth of holders have €1,500 or less.
12.6% own listed shares directly and 26.4% hold mutual funds (Table C1), against 11.4% and 14.2% across the euro area. Deposits, by contrast, are held by 99.6% of households. The dividing line in this data is not who saves but who invests, and it falls in very different places from one country to the next.
€50,000 places a household above about 54% of the households in Belgium that hold any financial asset. It is 1.3 times the median of €39,700, and still below the top-tenth threshold of €282,800. Both comparisons are worth holding at once: the multiple sounds large because the median is low, not because the amount is high.
45.3% of financial wealth in Belgium sits in deposits, 27.1% in mutual funds, 6.6% in listed shares and 11.4% in voluntary pension plans and life insurance (Table D3). The euro-area split is 44.1% deposits and 18.3% pensions. Read the split with the source note attached: financial assets in Belgium were imputed as a single block rather than item by item (note BE2), so the total is firmer than the division between the items.
75.2% of everything households in Belgium own is a real asset: property above all, plus vehicles, valuables and business equity. Only 24.8% is financial (Table D1), against 20.7% across the euro area. That is the answer to the question this page asks. Take the house out and most balance sheets shrink to a fraction of their headline size, which is why a net-worth figure and a savings figure feel like they describe two different households.
Deposits in current and savings accounts, mutual funds, bonds, listed shares held directly, money owed to the household by people outside it, voluntary pension plans and whole life insurance, and other financial assets such as managed accounts. It excludes the main residence and any other property, vehicles, valuables and business equity, and it excludes entitlements from state and workplace pension schemes, which for a typical employee are worth more than everything on this list combined.
Among the households that hold them, the median mutual-fund holding in Belgium is €40,700, the median direct shareholding is €10,000 and the median voluntary pension or life insurance is €16,300 (Table C2). These are medians among owners, not among all households, so a large figure here says nothing about how common the asset is: 26.4% hold funds and 12.6% hold shares.
Three reasons, all visible in the same tables. The distribution is already conditional on holding something, so it excludes the 0.3% of households in Belgium with no financial asset at all. 45.3% of what is held sits in deposits rather than in assets that grow. And financial assets are 24.8% of household wealth here, against 20.7% across the euro area. That is the second-highest financial share of the ten countries covered here, even though 66.7% of Belgian households own their main residence.
26.4% hold mutual funds, the second-highest rate of the ten countries here behind Finland and nearly twice the euro-area 14.2% (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C1), and 44.7% hold a voluntary pension plan or whole life insurance against 27.5% across the euro area. One caveat travels with the amounts rather than the ownership: financial assets in Belgium were imputed as a single block rather than item by item (source note BE2), so the 27.1% fund share of financial wealth is less firmly measured than the total it is a share of.
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