In Summary
- Global wealth: a record on paper, less so in real terms. Global financial assets expanded to a record EUR268.4trn in 2025, expanding +8.6% from the previous year, despite a challenging geopolitical and economic backdrop. Global wealth creation ran on autopilot, driven by markets, which accounted for 4 out of 5 euros of additional wealth, while fresh savings fell by -5.4% to EUR4.1trn. Yet the record looks less impressive after inflation: nominal financial assets have increased by almost 50% since 2019, but real growth amounts to just 23%, leaving purchasing power only 5% above its 2021 level.
- Portfolios set the tone. Portfolio composition increasingly determines who captures the gains from wealth creation. In 2025, securities grew by +12.4%, more than twice as fast as deposits (+5.7%) or insurance and pensions (+5.0%), pushing their share of global financial assets to a record 46.9%. North America’s securities-heavy portfolios, with an allocation of 60.7%, helped the region generate 51.4% of the global increase. Its real financial assets are now 21% above 2019 levels. Western Europe, by contrast, has barely recovered its purchasing power, with a real increase of just 0.5%. Over the past decade, valuation gains accounted for 71% of North American financial-asset growth, against 36% in Western Europe. As a result US financial assets grew 3.1pp faster than Europe’s, despite Europeans’ greater
- Asset growth surpasses debt. Assets raced ahead of debt, strengthening household balance sheets. Global household liabilities increased by +3.4% to EUR56.9trn, considerably slower than financial assets.The household-debt ratio fell to 60.9% of GDP, almost 13pps below its 2009 peak,reflecting both restrained borrowing and growth in nominal economic activity. Net financial assets consequently rose by +10.1% to EUR211.5trn. Debt can also impact the wealth rankings: while Swiss households remain the wealthiest in the world in terms of gross financial assets per capita, the US is ahead of Switzerland in net financial assets per capita, as Swiss household debt per person is more than twice the American level.
- Catch-up pace slowing. Globalization has changed the geography of wealth, but poorer economies are losing catch-up speed. The ratio of average net financial assets per capita in Advanced economies to emerging markets fell from 62 in 2005 to 21 in 2015, but only to 17 by 2025. Emerging markets nevertheless now account for 61.9% of the global middle-wealth class and 32.1% of the high-wealth class, compared with less than 2% of the latter in 2005. So,while wealth has become far more geographically diverse, the momentum of catch-up itself has faded. Trade fragmentation, weaker cross-border investment and reorganized supply chains are making convergence harder. Digital services and the green transition could open new opportunities, but seizing them will depend on access to capital, technology and skills; assets that are themselves unequally Distributed.
- Stubborn inequality. Global wealth concentration has eased, but national wealth inequality has barely moved in two decades. The richest 10% still own 85.4% of global net financial assets. This is down from 91.5% in 2005, but at the current pace of improvement it would take almost another eight decades for global concentration to approach the levels observed within individual countries. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the world‘s population covered by this report, almost 3bn people, collectively holds virtually no net financial assets. Within borders, distribution has proved almost immovable: the share held by the top-decile averaged 60.9% in 2025, against 60.4% in 2005, and the average-to-median ratio barely moved from 3.11 to 3.12. Still, ownership patterns are not fate. Some countries demonstrate that improvement is possible: the Netherlands reduced its top-decile share by 2.4pps to 56.1%, while Ireland’s average-to-median ratio fell from 4.87 to 3.42. These exceptions have not,however, translated into a broader reduction in national wealth inequality.
- AI growing the gap. AI could put an end to the calm on the distributional front by shifting more value creation from labor towards capital, in turn widening the divide between earners and owners. Allianz Research estimates that AI could affect almost 1 in 4 jobs across major economies over the next three years, mainly through reorganization. Displacement could temporarily outpace job creation as firms deploy technology faster than workers can retrain.If productivity gains flow mainly into profits rather than wages, asset owners could capture disproportionate benefits. Policy must therefore support worker adjustment, avoid tax incentives that favor replacing labor and broaden participation in capital returns. Otherwise, AI could create substantial wealth while concentrating its rewards and spreading disruption, putting social cohesion under pressure.
- AI promise and risk. The outlook for global wealth remains solid, but AI now carries both the upside and the risk that will shape it. Global financial assets are expected to grow by around +9% in 2026, once again well above the long-term rate of +6.0%. Further gains increasingly depend on corporate earnings delivering on elevated expectations, particularly around AI. Stronger productivity and profits could sustain the rally. If expectations have run ahead of economic reality, however, the resulting correction could reach far beyond technology stocks. In a downside scenario in which earnings disappoint and expectations prove too optimistic, a 25% correction in the S&P 500 could wipe around USD27trn from US household wealth, equivalent to almost 14% of total net worth, with weaker confidence and spending pushing the US economy into recession. In the medium term, AI should remain an important driver of global wealth but the path will be more volatile. Fragmentation, persistent inflation and elevated public debt will constrain returns, while the scale and timing of AI-related productivity gains remain uncertain. Annual financialasset growth is therefore expected to settle at around +5–6% over the medium term. AI offers substantial upside, but translating its technological promise into durable and broadly shared wealth will take time.