The Purple Book

Every year we publish the pensions universe risk profile, known as The Purple Book.

Download The Purple Book 2025

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The Purple Book provides comprehensive data and analysis of the UK defined benefit pension landscape and highlights trends in DB scheme funding, demographics and asset allocation.

On this page you can create your own downloadable charts, tables and graphs, find answers to the most frequently asked questions, find definitions for key terms and download all our previous Purple Books.

Create your own downloadable charts FAQs Key terms Previous Purple Books

About the data

There are an estimated 4,840 defined benefit (DB) schemes in the eligible universe as at 31 March 2025, a reduction from 4,974 as at 31 March 2024. The declining universe reflects schemes winding-up, scheme mergers, and schemes entering our assessment period.

This year the dataset covers 4,838 of the schemes eligible for compensation from us.

Find out more about the schemes we protect, including scheme demographics and funding, by using the interactive graph feature, or download this year’s Purple Book.

Following changes we made to our roll-forward methodology in 2024, some figures from 2023 and after are not directly comparable with those from earlier years. In the relevant yearly charts, a green vertical line separates 2022 and 2023 to show where an update was made.

Choose and compare data

Compare up to two units of measurements at a time, by selecting up to five sets of data, to create your own downloadable graph, chart or table.

Not sure what data you want to see? Simply select one of the three preset graphs below which have been pre-populated with key sets of data.

Total assets, s179 liabilities and aggregate s179 funding ratio by year

The aggregate s179 funding ratio improved by 1.9 percentage points over the year to 31 March 2025 to 125.0 per cent. The aggregate balance of £214 billion is similar to the prior year’s £219 billion.

Distribution of schemes by scheme status and year

The trend of schemes closing to benefit accrual has continued, with now only 22 per cent of schemes open to new members or benefit accrual.

s179 funding ratios by size of scheme membership as at 31 March 2025

The best funded schemes sit at opposite ends of the size spectrum. An aggregate s179 funding ratio of 128.1 per cent for schemes with more than 10,000 members and 127.9 per cent for schemes with fewer than 100 members.

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FAQs

Find answers to our most frequently asked questions about The Purple Book.

Every year we publish The Purple Book, also known as the pensions universe risk profile.

This publication provides comprehensive data and analysis of the UK defined benefit pension landscape. It highlights trends in Defined Benefit (DB) scheme funding, demographics and asset allocation.

Actuaries and other pension professionals use The Purple Book to understand the overall landscape of pension schemes, so they can give better advice to the ones they work with.

At the PPF, we use The Purple Book to understand the DB pensions landscape – it provides us with a comprehensive picture of the DB schemes that we protect.

It helps us to identify trends in the DB universe and build an understanding of what level of claims we might expect to see in the future. This ultimately supports us to make more informed decisions about investment strategies and funding, as well as to model potential future scenarios.

It’s also a way for us to publicly share statistics like the PPF levy, claims on us, schemes we’re assessing, our membership numbers, the compensation we’ve paid, and our future projections.

The Purple Book is the starting point of our PPF 7800 index, a monthly update of universe assets and liabilities that we publish on our website. Some pensions consultancies publish their own indices, often using the 7800 as their source data.

Data on the universe of schemes primarily comes from scheme returns provided to The Pensions Regulator (TPR).

The data is subject to validation by both the PPF and TPR.

Since our 2024 edition of The Purple Book, the data we receive from TPR follows their new enhanced analysis of scheme status data.

Details on the data requested in the scheme returns, and how schemes are directed to interpret and answer these requests, are available on TPR’s website.

The bulk of our analysis uses funding estimates where liability values are on an s179 basis.

This is, broadly speaking, what would have to be paid to an insurance company to take on PPF levels of compensation (rather than full scheme benefits).

The figures at the effective date of The Purple Book have been rolled forward from the schemes’ last s179 valuation.

Unlike the occupational defined benefit pension schemes we protect, the assets we hold over our current liabilities are not a ‘surplus’ but instead a reserve.

Our funding framework separates the funding requirements for current members from those of future claims.

We hold reserves for future claims from the universe of defined benefit pension funds we protect, and in case of longevity risk. In this sense the reserves represent a contingent liability which could crystalise if these events were to occur.

Holding suitable reserves is essential to ensure we can provide financial security for our current and future members and reduce risks for levy payers.

Key terms

We've shared some key definitions for understanding The Purple Book. For a full glossary, visit the appendix in our latest Purple Book.

A roll-forward is a way of estimating the value of assets and liabilities at a date later than that of their initial valuation, without doing a full new valuation.

This is generally based on movements in various reference market yields and indices over the period in between the initial valuation and the later estimate, and can include or ignore several factors over a period of time. For example, member movements, benefits paid out from a scheme, or new benefits accrued.

Roll-forward methodologies are approximate in nature and the modelling necessarily features a number of estimations and judgements.

The Purple Book also features an estimate of the liabilities on an estimated full-buy-out basis – i.e. based on original scheme levels of pension.

We calculate this estimate in the same way as for s179 liabilities, except we make an approximate allowance for the difference between the compensation the PPF would pay members and the benefit levels paid by schemes (according to the simplified scheme benefits data submitted to TPR in the scheme returns).

The PPF-eligible DB universe covers certain DB occupational schemes and DB elements of hybrid schemes. Some DB schemes will be exempt from the PPF, including:

unfunded public sector schemes
some funded public sector schemes, for example, those providing pensions to local government employees
schemes to which a Minister of the Crown has given a guarantee
schemes with fewer than two members
schemes which began to wind up, or were completely wound-up, before 6 April 2005

Scheme status in the Purple Book is split between:

open schemes, where new members can join the DB section of the scheme and accrue benefits
schemes closed to new members, in which existing members continue to accrue benefits
schemes closed to future benefit accrual, where existing members can no longer accrue new years of service
schemes that are winding up

A hybrid scheme is one that provides DB and defined contribution (DC) benefits. The treatment of such schemes has varied in past editions of The Purple Book as better data has become available. At present we define a scheme as closed if the DB section is closed, even if the DC section remains open.

Scheme status is initially submitted to TPR in the annual scheme returns, but can change following TPR’s validation procedures on this data.

Schemes’ allocation to bonds in the scheme return data, and thus in The Purple Book, should reflect both their direct bond holdings and Liability Driven Investment (LDI) that behaves, economically, like bonds.

LDI is investment in assets so that changes in the value of the assets, in response to changes in expectations for future interest rates and inflation, match changes in the value of liabilities.

Some LDI funds use leverage. This means greater exposure to changes in interest rates and inflation than would be possible with unleveraged assets such as physical gilts alone.