The Philippines publishes no household balance sheet — SSS at ₱979.5 billion and GSIS at ₱1,822.7 billion are the measured parts
There is no official figure for the share of Filipino household assets held in deposits, because no agency compiles a household financial balance sheet. What is published is the asset side of the two state pension funds and the life insurance sector, each on its own basis.
What share of Filipino household assets sits in deposits?
There is no official answer. That is the finding, not a gap in this article.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas publishes the Philippine Flow of Funds, but it is a transactions account: it records what each sector acquired and incurred during a year, not what it holds. No balance-sheet table exists for the household sector, so the denominator the question requires — total household financial assets — is not produced by anyone.
The deposit side is missing in a second way. The monetary and banking tables split deposits by instrument (transferable, savings, time) and by type of depository corporation. They do not split them by type of depositor. There is no household, individual or personal line anywhere in Tables 16.1 to 16.4 of the Philippine Statistical Yearbook, which reproduce the BSP’s own survey of depository corporations.
The pieces that are measured
What the Philippines does publish, at length and with long histories, is the asset side of institutions that hold claims on behalf of households.
The pieces that are measured
SSS total assets (₱ m)
Shared linear scale from zero. Selected entries from the table below. Its dates, units, definitions and limitations still apply.
| Year end | SSS total assets (₱ m) | of which investments | GSIS total assets (₱ m) | of which Social Insurance Fund |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 411,275.2 | 378,064.1 | 958,200 | 886,073 |
| 2019 | 561,058.5 | 509,094.3 | 1,319,572 | 1,219,598 |
| 2024 | 979,510.0 | 885,173.0 | 1,822,681 | 1,662,620 |
The life insurance sector is the third piece. Its total assets were ₱1,532,167.5 million in 2020 and ₱1,921,060.6 million in 2024, of which ₱1,080,337.3 million sat in variable or unit-linked products, where the investment risk rests with the policyholder rather than the insurer (Insurance Commission).
These columns must not be added. SSS and GSIS are institutional balance sheets, not the sum of members' individual entitlements; the GSIS figure is also included in the Insurance Commission's industry aggregates, so adding the two double-counts. The 2024 SSS figure is flagged as preliminary by the source. Insurance Commission data before 2020 is not on the same basis and is not shown. And none of these three is a deposit figure: the largest single asset class Filipino households are likely to hold has no published total at all.
Why this matters more than it sounds
A missing asset side changes how the published numbers get read. Household borrowing, remittances and deposit growth are all reported regularly; what is never reported is the stock those flows accumulate into. So the Philippines has no equivalent of Malaysia’s published financial-assets-to-debt ratio of 2.1 times, or of Japan’s ¥2,385.7 trillion.
It also means the deposit question cannot be answered indirectly. Total deposit liabilities of the banking system exist, but they cover corporate, government and non-resident depositors together with individuals in one undivided figure. Dividing that by anything produces a number about the banking system, not about households.
The three Asian markets that do publish the answer
| Market | Reference | Currency & deposits | Debt securities | Equity & funds | Insurance & pension | Other | Sector definition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | end-March 2026 | 47.22% | 1.52% | 23.63% | 24.48% | 3.15% | households incl. unincorporated business |
| Taiwan | end-2024 | 34.78% | 0.25% | 26.10% | 26.12% | 12.74% | households & non-profit institutions |
| Singapore | 2026 Q2 | 32.36% | — | 20.19% | 47.45% | — | households |
| Korea | 2025 Q2 | 45.23% | 3.25% | 22.52% | 28.18% | 0.83% | households & NPISH |
| United States | end-March 2026 | 10.7% | 4.3% | 56.7% | 25.7% | 2.5% | households & nonprofits (BOJ basis) |
| Euro area | end-March 2026 | 31.1% | 2.8% | 37.6% | 26.5% | 2.0% | households & NPISH (BOJ basis) |
The Philippines has no row here, and neither do Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam. A blank is a data-coverage gap, not a zero, and no proxy has been substituted. For Japan, the United States and the euro area the equity-and-funds column adds the "equity" and "investment trusts" lines of the same Bank of Japan comparison table — a sum of published items from one table and one vintage, not an estimate. Sector definitions and reference dates differ by row.
Two features of the Philippine case would make its row worth having if it existed. Membership of SSS and GSIS is compulsory for the sectors they cover, which places a block of household claims outside the banking system in the same way CPF does in Singapore. And remittances from overseas workers arrive as a flow into household balance sheets that no stock measure currently captures. This paragraph is interpretation; the figures in the tables are observations from published statistics.
What to check when reading these numbers
Check whether a figure has a denominator. Fund assets and deposit totals are levels. A share of household assets is a ratio, and here the bottom of that ratio does not exist.
Check whose balance sheet it is. SSS and GSIS assets are the funds’ own; what an individual member is entitled to is a different and unpublished number.
Check stock against flow. The Philippine, Thai and Indonesian flow-of-funds accounts all record transactions only. Adding to savings in a year and holding savings are different measurements.
Finally, do not stack the measured pieces into a total. GSIS sits inside the Insurance Commission aggregates, funds hold deposits with banks, and the overlaps are not published.
Questions & answers
What share of Filipino household assets is held in cash and deposits?
There is no official figure. The Philippines compiles no household financial balance sheet: the BSP's Philippine Flow of Funds is a transactions account, so the total household financial assets that the question needs as a denominator is not produced by anyone.
Are household deposits published separately?
No. The monetary and banking tables split deposits by instrument — transferable, savings, time — and by type of depository corporation, never by type of depositor. There is no household or individual line in the BSP tables reproduced in the Philippine Statistical Yearbook.
How large are the state pension funds?
SSS year-end assets were ₱979,510.0 million in 2024 on the figure it reports to the PSA, of which ₱885,173.0 million were investments. GSIS total assets were ₱1,822,681 million in the same year, with ₱1,662,620 million in the Social Insurance Fund.
Which Asian markets do publish this?
Japan, Taiwan and Singapore. Their currency-and-deposits shares of household financial assets are 47.22% at end-March 2026, 34.78% at end-2024 and 32.36% in 2026 Q2. Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam do not publish a comparable figure either.