Singapore to be home to highest number of millionaires in Asia-Pacific by 2030

Singapore will overtake Australia to have Asia-Pacific’s highest share of millionaires in the adult population by 2030, according to a report by HSBC Holdings Plc.

The financial hub is expected to top the list in Asia-Pacific followed by Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the HSBC bank said. The proportion of millionaires in the four countries is also expected to be higher than the US by the end of the decade, the report said.

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In 2021, Australia ranked highest in the region, while Singapore was second. The HSBC report did not say how the US compared for that year.

Singapore currently has the second-highest percentage of millionaire adults at 7.5 per cent, just behind Australia’s 8 per cent.

Singapore’s surge

In eight years, over 13 per cent of Singapore’s adult population will be worth $1 million or more, surpassing the proportion of millionaires in the US, China, and 12 other Asia-Pacific economies, according to the report.

The bank predicts that by 2030 only 8.8 per cent of US adults and 4.4 per cent of Chinese adults will be millionaires. Among Asian economies, Australia will come in second to Singapore with around 12.5 per cent of its adult population as millionaires by that time, and Hong Kong will come in third with 11.1 per cent.

Asia’s financial wealth has exceeded that of the US since the aftermath of the global financial crisis, HSBC said adding, the region also includes some of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Vietnam, the Philippines and India are likely to see the number of adults holding wealth of at least $250,000 more than double by 2030, according to the report. Still, the region is home to many millions of impoverished people as well.

The household wealth projections in the report used estimates and projections of adult population, per capita mean wealth, and nominal per capita gross domestic product, HSBC said.

Over 6 million millionaires in India

In absolute terms, mainland China is expected to have around 50 million millionaires by 2030 and India could house more than six million, HSBC said. That works out to be over 4 per cent of adults in mainland China, and less than 1 per cent of adults in India, according to the report.

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“An account of Asia’s growing wealth also shines a light on the societal resources that are ultimately available to lift millions more out of poverty,” Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist and co-head of global research Asia for HSBC, wrote in the report. “After all, the region is hardly short of capital, even if this is unevenly distributed, both between and within economies.”