Global personal wealth grows 4.6% on stable US dollar and buoyant financial markets

UAE ranks second globally with 5.8% growth in millionaire numbers last year, UBS report says

A stable US dollar and buoyant financial markets were key contributors to personal wealth growth globally last year. Reuters

Global personal wealth grew 4.6 per cent in 2024, after a 4.2 per cent increase in 2023. Although global wealth has increased for all wealth groups, the speed of growth was not uniform, with the expansion largely tilted towards Eastern Europe and North America, according to a new report by Swiss banking group UBS.

Eastern Europe achieved the highest regional growth in total personal wealth in 2024 at over 12 per cent, closely followed by the US with more than 11 per cent. A stable US dollar and buoyant financial markets were key contributors to this growth, UBS’s Global Wealth Report 2025 said.

Asia-Pacific (Apac) and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) lagged behind, with growth rates of below 3 per cent and less than 0.5 per cent, respectively.

The US and China jointly accounted for more than half of the entire personal wealth globally, according to the report, which analysed 56 markets representing more than 92 per cent of the world’s wealth in 2024.

“Individual annual blips aside, there has been a marked and consistent increase in personal wealth around the world, since the start of the millennium, both overall and in each major region,” the report said.

“Wealth is increasing steadily even after adjusting for inflation, i.e. in real terms. Overall, total wealth net of debt and net of inflation has risen at a compound annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent since 2000.

“Over the next five years, our projections for average wealth per adult point to continued growth. This expansion will be led by the US as well as Greater China.”

Technological innovation and real estate prices are likely to support wealth growth in several economies, Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, told The National.

Housing is the most important asset for many people, and has been the dominant driver behind growing numbers of $1 million to $5 million wealth holders, he said.

The UAE has rapidly become a hub for the wealthy thanks to its strong economic growth and policy reforms. Dubai and Abu Dhabi lead the top five preferred global locations for high-net-worth people looking to relocate, driven by personal tax incentives and a good quality of life, global property consultancy Savills said in an April report.

The number of millionaires living in Dubai has doubled in the past decade, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing wealth hubs, according to World’s Wealthiest Cities Report 2025 by New World Wealth for Henley & Partners, released in April.

The world added over 680,000 new US dollar millionaires in 2024, an uptick of 1.2 per cent, the UBS report said. The US accounted for almost 40 per cent of global millionaires and added 379,000 new millionaires last year, more than 1,000 a day. In contrast, China added 380 new millionaires per day.

Watch: Dubai's millionaires double as London drops down wealth list

UBS projected that an additional 5.34 million people would join the ranks of the world’s USD millionaires by 2029.

In 2024, Turkey recorded an 8.4 per cent increase in its number of USD millionaires over 2023, equivalent to a boost of roughly 7,000 people in a single year. The UAE was in second place with a rise of 5.8 per cent in millionaire numbers over the course of last year, thanks to approximately 13,000 new entrants in this category, the study found.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia leads the millionaire ranking with almost 340,000 millionaires, followed by the UAE with 240,000 and Israel with 186,000, according to UBS.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have witnessed strong growth in wealth per adult since the beginning of the decade, measured in local currency net of inflation, the report said.

Nearly 62 per cent of gross wealth is allocated to financial assets in the UAE, and almost 58 per cent in Saudi Arabia, while non-financial assets such as real estate and land account for roughly 48 per cent of wealth in both countries, according to UBS.

“Everyday millionaires [those with investable assets between $1 million and $5 million] have more than quadrupled since 2000, reaching around 52 million globally by the end of last year,” the report said.

“This group now accounts for approximately $107 trillion of total wealth. The growth of this segment has largely been driven by rising real estate prices and exchange rate effects.”

Meanwhile, the report found that adults in North America were the wealthiest on average ($593,347) in 2024, followed by Oceania ($496,696) and Western Europe ($287,688).

However, Switzerland continued to top the list for average wealth per adult on an individual market level, followed by the US, Hong Kong and Luxembourg.

Denmark, South Korea, Sweden, Ireland, Poland and Croatia recorded the biggest increases in average wealth, all growing at double-digit rates (when measured in local currencies), the research showed.

UBS also estimated that more than $83 trillion is expected to be transferred over the next 20 to 25 years, with $9 trillion moving horizontally (between spouses) and $74 trillion moving between generations. The largest volume of wealth transfer is anticipated in the US at over $29 trillion.

"We expect to see a volume of wealth transfers of the inter-generational and intra-generational type of $103 billion in Saudi Arabia and $19 billion in the UAE, equivalent to respectively 4.6 per cent and 1.4 per cent of the country’s entire private wealth," the report said.