🇳🇱 the Netherlands·ECB household survey · 2023
Am I rich in the Netherlands, 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 the Netherlands you hold more than
50%
Above the middle
Past the €23,500 median. Worth remembering how low that bar sits: half of all holders are below it.
€23,500 is right at the €23,500 median for the Netherlands. 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 the Netherlands.
Among the 100.0% of households in the Netherlands that hold any financial asset, the median total is €23,500 and the mean is €73,200. 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
€1K
A tenth of the households with any financial assets in the Netherlands hold no more than this.
Median
€24K
Half hold less than this. The mean is €73K, which is what a handful of large portfolios does to an average.
Ninetieth percentile
€168K
The top tenth in the Netherlands starts here. The survey publishes nothing above it, so there is no top 1% number.
€23,500 places you above 50% of the households in the Netherlands that hold any financial asset.
Against the euro area as a whole you would be above 56% rather than 50%.
Who owns what
Almost every household in the Netherlands has a bank account. After that it thins out fast.
16.9% of households in the Netherlands hold mutual funds and 6.3% 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
Deposits
100.0%
€18,700Euro area: 99.1% own it
Mutual funds
16.9%
€15,700Euro area: 14.2% own it
Bonds
0.8%
Not publishedEuro area: 3.5% own it
Listed shares
6.3%
€12,500Euro area: 11.4% own it
Money owed to the household
5.2%
€4,100Euro area: 6.6% own it
Voluntary pension and life insurance
11.9%
€19,000Euro area: 27.5% own it
Other financial assets
4.8%
€6,400Euro 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.
Where the money sits
What financial wealth in the Netherlands is actually made of.
62.6% of financial wealth in the Netherlands sits in deposits, against 44.1% across the euro area, and 7.5% 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.
Deposits62.6% · EA 44.1%
Mutual funds15.8% · EA 13.3%
Listed shares5.6% · EA 9.7%
Money owed to the household2.2% · EA 1.8%
Voluntary pension and life insurance7.5% · EA 18.3%
Other financial assets5.9% · EA 9.8%
Shares of the total financial assets held by households in the Netherlands. 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 21.4% of everything households in the Netherlands own. The other 78.6% 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
21.4%
Everything on this page, as a share of total household assets in the Netherlands.
Real
78.6%
Property, vehicles, valuables and business equity in the Netherlands, none of which a monthly statement tracks.
Euro area, financial
20.7%
The euro-area financial share is 20.7%, against 21.4% in the Netherlands.
Three numbers and an outlier
What these numbers look like from the outside.
Deposits as a share of financial wealth
62.6%, the highest of the 8 countries here
62.6% of financial wealth in the Netherlands sits in deposits. Every point held in cash is a point not compounding, which for households near the median matters more than the size of the balance.
Households with any financial assets
100.0%
Every percentile on this page is measured among these households. The remaining 0.0% in the Netherlands hold nothing at all, and the survey publishes no distribution for them.
Own listed shares directly
6.3%
Against 11.4% across the euro area. Another 16.9% of households in the Netherlands hold mutual funds, which is the other way into the same markets.
Hold a voluntary pension or life insurance
11.9%
Against 27.5% across the euro area. These sit on top of the state and workplace schemes, which the survey does not count as assets at all.
Now put the house back in
Property, vehicles and business equity are the other 78.6% of what households own. See where your whole balance sheet lands.
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The cash half is the half that does not compound
62.6% of financial wealth in the Netherlands sits in deposits, against 44.1% across the euro area. Deposits keep their number and lose purchasing power slowly; funds and shares are where the larger balances on this page come from. Capital at risk.
We've used this for years
Being above the €23,500 median in this data is a lower bar than it sounds. The number that matters now is your own, tracked over time.
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Frequently asked questions
Among the 100.0% of households in the Netherlands that hold any financial asset, the median is €23,500 and the mean is €73,200, 3.1 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. The Dutch mean is only 3.1 times the median, one of the narrower gaps of the ten countries covered here.
€168,200 (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 €1,200 or less.
6.3% own listed shares directly and 16.9% hold mutual funds (Table C1), against 11.4% and 14.2% across the euro area. Deposits, by contrast, are held by 100.0% 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 68% of the households in the Netherlands that hold any financial asset. It is 2.1 times the median of €23,500, and still below the top-tenth threshold of €168,200. Both comparisons are worth holding at once: the multiple sounds large because the median is low, not because the amount is high.
62.6% of financial wealth in the Netherlands sits in deposits, 15.8% in mutual funds, 5.6% in listed shares and 7.5% in voluntary pension plans and life insurance (Table D3). The euro-area split is 44.1% deposits and 18.3% pensions. The deposit share of 62.6% is the highest of the eight countries here where that figure is comparable, and the survey published no bond figures for the Netherlands at all.
78.6% of everything households in the Netherlands own is a real asset: property above all, plus vehicles, valuables and business equity. Only 21.4% 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 the Netherlands is €15,700, the median direct shareholding is €12,500 and the median voluntary pension or life insurance is €19,000 (Table C2). These are medians among owners, not among all households, so a large figure here says nothing about how common the asset is: 16.9% hold funds and 6.3% hold shares.
Three reasons, all visible in the same tables. The distribution is conditional on holding something, which in the Netherlands excludes nobody: every household reports at least one financial asset. 62.6% of what is held sits in deposits rather than in assets that grow. And financial assets are 21.4% of household wealth here, against 20.7% across the euro area. Entitlements from workplace pension schemes are excluded from these tables entirely, so nothing a Dutch household has built up in one appears anywhere on this page.
62.6% of it sits in deposits, the highest share of the eight countries here where that figure is comparable, against 44.1% across the euro area (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table D3). Ownership of the alternatives is thin: 6.3% of households hold listed shares and 11.9% hold a voluntary pension or life insurance, against euro-area rates of 11.4% and 27.5% (Table C1). Part of the explanation sits outside the data: workplace pension entitlements are excluded from these tables entirely, so the retirement saving most Dutch households do never appears here.
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