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Asset Management / Wealth Management
APAC's well-oiled wealth machine grows despite pandemic
Region to be home to almost a quarter of all UHNWIs by 2025, study projects
Tom King 24 Feb 2021

Asia-Pacific will remain one of the strongest engines for wealth with the number of ultra high net worth individuals in the region expected to grow to 168,567 by 2025. With vaccines now being rolled out in major economies, UHNWIs in APAC are also significantly more optimistic than their peers in other regions, according to the latest edition of Knight Frank’s The Wealth Report.  

The UHNWI population, those with a net worth of over US$30 million including their primary residence, in nine of 14 countries tracked within Asia-Pacific is growing faster than in the rest of the world, the study finds.

It also points out that the share of the global billionaire population in APAC is expected to rise from 36% in 2020 to 41% in 2025, with China accounting for half of the region’s billionaire wealth.

By 2025, APAC is predicted to be home to almost a quarter of all UHNWIs, which is 17% more than what the region had a decade ago, largely led by Indonesia and India with New Zealand and Mainland China following closely behind.

The report was based on a survey carried out by Knight Frank in the fourth quarter of 2020, involving over 600 private bankers, wealth advisers, intermediaries and family offices managing approximately US$3.3 trillion on behalf of global UHNWIs.  Half of the respondents said their clients’ wealth had increased in the past year despite the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

Three key themes made that happen: diversification, equities, and property, which the advisers said was consistent with how they calibrated their clients’ portfolios at the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in late 2019.

While the ongoing disruption caused by Covid-19 remains a threat to wealth creation and preservation, the respondents to the survey in Asia-Pacific, excluding Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, generally take an optimistic view in terms of wealth growth, with over 80% predicting their clients’ wealth to increase or increase significantly in 2021.

“Given the vaccine optimism, most major markets in Asia-Pacific (Australia, Chinese Mainland, Singapore, India, South Korea, and Taiwan) see a larger majority of their respondents (~90%) expecting wealth growth in 2021. It is also worth noting that markets struggling with the outbreak like India, Malaysia and the Philippines are also anticipating wealth growth, showing the strength and confidence in the continued growth of wealth in Asia,” says Victoria Garrett, head of residential, Asia-Pacific, at Knight Frank.

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