But there is a demographic shift in the distribution of wealth as well as the focus of growth moves towards Asia-Pacific, the report says.
The deca-millionaire population of Asia-Pacific (260,000) will overtake that of Europe (250,000) for the first time this year, says Ledbury Research.
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By GlobalDataThe report also says that the total of millionaires globally will witness a 28% rise over the next four years (from 17.3 to 22.1 million people) and South and Central Asia will see a 105% rise followed by Eastern Europe (66%) and South and Central Asia (49%).
According to the report, Asia-Pacific will have the single largest ultra-wealthy population in the world, ahead of Europe and North America. But the wealth managers are ignoring economic move eastwards and are slow in venturing outside the historic wealth centres of Europe.
South-east Asia which accounts for 22% of millionaires globally has only 7% of wealth management outlets representing them. In fact Europe has almost 50% of wealth management offices, with only 28% of the millionaire population, the report says.
"Despite these clear shifts in wealth eastwards, wealth managers have not yet responded accordingly: the supply of wealth management does not mirror its potential demand. This is to say that relative to the wealthy population in the South East Asia, there are too few wealth manager outlets in the region," the report adds.
Given the prevailing volatility in markets and bleak economic forecasts, we believe that Asia will not see strong gains in HNWI for considerable lenghth of time in near future.
From the perspective of the players operating in ar4ena, we do not believe that the Asian market is presently not as rosy as the report suggests.
Inspite of less number of players operating in the field, company’s are not making profit as expected. Competition among wealth management and private banking firms fighting for the business of Asia’s HNWI has heated up significantly over the past year while, at the same time, the appetite of Asia’s HNWI for wealth sector services has increased only moderately.
Rising operational cost and manpower cost has has already squeeaed the profit margins. Fierce competition has driven up costs to what many industry participants say are unsustainable levels, and it is likely to shoot up further in the near future.
