China continues to be a big player among the key markets in the world alongside the US, Japan, and Germany. The four aforementioned markets account for 62% of new HNWI in 2017. In other parts of APAC, India has been recognised as the fastest-growing market globally in 2017. Achieved via a 20.4% HNWI population and 21.6% wealth growth, it is expected that by 2025 Asia-Pacific will hold more than $40 trillion in HNWI wealth.
The growth in Asia’s wealth grows alongside the expansion of technology. One area is the rapid increase in tech companies who are taking steps towards financial services with the potential of wealth management, stepping away from western services that the world has relied on for many years. Some noteworthy companies are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, Chinese tech companies that have been leading the push.
Recently Tencent invested $360 million in investment bank China International Capital Corporation. Following this Tencent received a license to sell mutual funds to WeChat’s 1 billion users.
With forward steps like this in Wealth driven countries, some are sceptical, however younger generations prove to be open to the idea of big tech companies creating innovative financial services and wealth management tools.
The finance industry recognises Asia’s HNWI leading role in this development with people embracing it with open arms as about 87.1% of APac (ex-Japan) HNWIs showed a desire to use big tech wealth management services in 2018.