How many wealthy people are in the UK

Question

Dear Prep Lounge Community,

I was wondering how you would approach the following market sizing question:
How many people are in the UK, with a wealth of 250k - 2 Million, who would be willing to invest in the stock market?

I think it's quite a challenging market sizing exercise because if one goes over the salary since you also have to come up with a saving formula. Would be interested to hear how to you would simply your approach without being too inaccurate.

Many thanks and kind regards,
Nicola

Answer 1

Hello Nicola!

Precisely the other day I was looking at the result of something similar to this question, for Spain.

The way I would approach it would be the following:

Total population
Divide into age segments -some groups, as 0-10 years, can be discarded at this point-.
Clarify whether wealth also means in terms of properties, etc.
Estimate, with an estimated average salary, the % in each age group that have a wealth of 250k - 2 Million

It changes a lot it the problem is total wealth vs. total cash for investment, so worth clarifying!

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Answer 2

Hi Nicola,

I agree with Clara - age segmentation is your best bet.

In order to add a little bit of deeper thought to this, I would probably also do a geographic segmentation. I would probably segment by London and non-London. Wealth levels will be much higher in London than the rest of the UK.

So, age breakdown in London and age breakdown outside of London, then respective % wealth within each group.

Answer 3

Hi there,

It's an interesting question, but I think it's incomplete, because you talk about people's wealth, but you don't say anything about how much you need these people to invest in stock market.

Let's assume we want to calculate how many of these people want to invest $10.000 in stock market.

Also clarify with the interviewer if they'd like you to count households or individuals, it can depend on the country.

1) Let's take individuals. So you first identify people whose net worth is about 250k-2Million.

2) Then you find out how many of them CAN invest these 10.000, meaning they have this amount of liquid money.

3) How many of them WILL or WANT to invest into stock market:

Stock market is medium to high risk investment, so you can filter out those customers who don't want to take risks normally (ex, elder people).
Out of the people who are left, take out those who has already been exposed to high risk investments.

4) The number of people left ultimately are those who will be willing to invest into stock market.

Hope it was helpful,

GB

Answer 4

Good answers already - would suggest segment population by age and by geography (rural/urban split). Make an assumption on avg income and avg savings, and apply that segmentation between age buckets