It’s a great time to be an Asian millionaire. According to the new Capgemini World Wealth Report, Asia’s HNWIs have more wealth than those individuals in North America and Europe. The richest citizens in Asia control an impressive USD17.4 trillion while wealthy individuals in North America have USD16.6 trillion.
The wealth of Asian millionaires increased by 9.9 percent last year. In the United States and Canada, the poor performance of the equity markets slowed growth to 2.3 percent in 2015. Europe also recorded a slight growth while Latin American HNWIs coped with a decline in net worth of 3.7 percent.
In 2014, the number of millionaires in Asia overtook the number of millionaires in North America and the report noted that this total increased once again in 2015 rising 9.4 percent. There are currently 5.1 million millionaires in Asia with 2.7 million of this population situated in Japan. Another one million HNWIs are living in China. The U.S. has 4.5 million millionaires.
China had the fastest growth of wealth during 2015 jumping by 16.2 percent y-o-y. The report pointed out that the number of millionaires in China is likely to expand over the course of the next few years.
While wealth in Asia has traditionally been driven by the financial services, technology and health care sectors, there has recently been a shift and more and more start-ups are creating millionaires.
“It’s a more entrepreneurial source of wealth,” Bill Sullivan, head of global financial services market intelligence at Capgemini, stated. The rise of Alibaba is just one example of a startup having created wealth in Asia.
On the whole, wealth across the world has risen dramatically during the past decade. Wealth held by millionaires more than tripled growing from USD16.6 trillion in 1996 to USD58.7 trillion in 2015. The report concluded that worldwide wealth could surpass USD100 trillion by 2025.
