You bank with a UK bank. You fill up at a UK forecourt. You may hold a workplace pension that was set up years ago and never revisited, and an ISA that has drifted into whatever the platform’s default happened to be. It is easy to assume that your money is therefore “invested in Britain” — and that this is either a virtue or a problem, depending on which headline you last read.
The uncomfortable truth is narrower and more useful: the question is not whether the UK is under-owned or over-owned in aggregate. It is whether the UK slice of your portfolio is a deliberate decision or an accident of familiarity. Those are different things, and only one of them is worth defending.
The aggregate picture is not what the headlines imply
Before auditing your own accounts, it helps to correct a common premise. The story that UK investors are rampantly overweight the domestic market does not hold for workplace pensions. The Department for Work and Pensions estimated that around 20% of workplace defined contribution (DC) assets were invested in the UK by 2023, down from around 50% in 2012, driven primarily by a movement away from UK listed equities (DWP, Pension Fund Investment and the UK Economy). In 2023, an estimated 70% of private-sector workplace DC assets sat in overseas equities and 6% in UK equities. The domestic share of DC listed equity fell from 40% in 2012 to 8% in 2023.
The FCA’s 2026 asset allocation survey of contract-based workplace default arrangements points the same way: 15.3% of disclosed default assets were UK investment and 84.7% non-UK (FCA, Asset allocation survey). And the Investment Association’s 2025 ISA Barometer, citing IA data, reports UK equities at 11.5% of total UK investor funds under management against 42% in overseas equities (IA/Opinium, July 2025).
So if you hold a modern default fund, the odds are that your UK exposure is modest — perhaps lower than you assume. The risk you need to check is not necessarily too much UK; it may be that you do not know what you hold at all.
Two different questions, often confused
There is a structural question about what UK-listed indices contain. The FTSE 100 is a concentrated index by construction: a relatively small number of large companies account for a large share of its weight, and the index has historically leaned toward financials, energy and mining rather than the technology-heavy composition of some overseas indices. That is a real feature of the index, but it is a feature of the index, not proof about your portfolio. I have not asserted specific sector weights here because the current official factsheet and constituent-weight downloads did not retrieve cleanly for this piece; if you want the exact figures, go to FTSE Russell’s own factsheet for the index and read the sector breakdown directly rather than trusting a second-hand number.
The second question is the one you can actually act on: what do your wrappers hold? A workplace pension, a SIPP, a stocks and shares ISA and a general investment account can each hold a different fund with a different geographic mandate. Two funds with different names can hold the same handful of large UK names. Overlap — not the headline allocation on a factsheet — is where accidental concentration hides.
A practical audit routine
This is a method, not a recommendation. It is designed to tell you what you own before you decide whether to change it.
- List every account. Workplace pension (including any old ones), SIPP, stocks and shares ISAs, general investment account, and any investment bonds. Include the provider and the approximate value.
- For each account, find the fund name and the geographic split. Most platforms publish a fund factsheet with a UK/Europe/North America/other breakdown. Note the UK percentage and the date of the factsheet.
- Find the top ten holdings of each fund. Write them down. If the same three or four large UK names appear across several funds, you have overlap that a single fund’s UK percentage will not reveal.
- Add up your actual UK exposure across all accounts as a percentage of your total investable assets. Compare it with what you thought it was.
- Note the date and the source for each figure. Fund factsheets go stale; a 2023 split may not describe the fund today.
If you hold a workplace default fund, start there. The FCA survey suggests the UK share of default assets is around 15%, but your scheme’s default may differ. The point is to replace assumption with a number you can date-stamp.
The psychology is real, and it is documented
Familiarity feels like knowledge. Holding the bank you use and the oil major you buy fuel from can feel like understanding a business, when it is really understanding a brand. The IA/Opinium survey found that 71% of investors believe it is important to support the UK economy by investing in British businesses, and three fifths prefer investing in the UK because they know the market better (IA/Opinium, July 2025). Those are legitimate preferences. They are not expected-return forecasts, and they should be priced as preferences rather than mistaken for analysis.
For a pre-retiree, the sequencing question matters more than the geography question. Money you will spend in the next few years should not depend on any single market’s mood, UK or otherwise. A UK tilt that happens to be concentrated in banks and oil majors is a bet on those sectors, not a bet on “Britain” in any diversified sense.
What would make a UK tilt deliberate
A deliberate home tilt is defensible if you can write down three things: the reason, the size, and the review date. “I want some exposure to UK-listed companies because I expect to spend in sterling and I accept the concentration that comes with it” is a reason. “I have always held it” is not a decision just because it has been held for years.
If you work with an adviser, ask them to show you the UK exposure across all your accounts, not just the one fund they recommended. The FCA Register is a public record of firms and individuals authorised or registered by the FCA or PRA, and it includes warnings about unauthorised and clone firms (FCA, Financial Services Register). Checking the firm and the individual is a reasonable first step before a conversation about concentration. The question you should be asking years before you retire is not “which market will win” but “what have I actually agreed to own, and why”.
FAQ
Is my workplace pension overweight the UK?
Probably not by default. The DWP estimated around 20% of workplace DC assets were UK-invested by 2023, and the FCA’s survey of contract-based default arrangements found 15.3% UK investment. But your scheme’s default may differ, so check the fund factsheet rather than assuming.
Does holding UK banks and oil majors count as home bias?
It can be a form of concentration, but the retrieved sources for this piece do not establish current FTSE 100 sector weights or typical retail portfolio composition. The useful step is to look at your own top holdings across all accounts and see whether the same names recur.
Should I sell my UK holdings?
That is a decision for you and, if you use one, your adviser. This article sets out an audit method, not a recommendation. The point is to know what you own and to be able to state why you own it.
How often should I review the UK slice?
There is no single correct interval. A practical approach is to review whenever you change accounts, when a fund factsheet’s date is more than a year old, and at the same time as your broader pre-retirement planning review.