Australian wealth increases despite variable global growth: UBS

Australia saw a 10% jump in median wealth, with latest findings showing the country is seeing a more "equal spread" of wealth than most nations.

The UBS Global Wealth Report 2025 shows that despite the global wealth increase, the speed of growth was "far from uniform" across the 56 markets analysed, with the growth tilted strongly towards North America and mainland China, which occupied more than half of the entire personal wealth in the study.

Australia remains in second position for median wealth, representing a more equal spread of wealth than comparable nations like the UK, New Zealand and others.

Other key findings include average wealth growing by almost 4% per Australian adult in 2024 over the year before, and over 15% since the beginning of the decade, UBS found.

"Median wealth has fared even better, rising by almost 11% year-on-year in 2024 and by over 19% since 2020," UBS said.

"The difference between these two measures suggests that people in the middle of the wealth scale enjoyed more pronounced wealth growth than their peers in higher wealth bands."

Further, average wealth per adult is at US$516,000 ($790,000) - fifth overall out of the 56 markets analysed. The report also predicts there will be five million more millionaires by 2029 - Australia now has close to two million USD millionaires, ranking eighth globally.

"The world added over 680,000 new USD millionaires in 2024, an uptick of 1.2%," the report said.

"We expect their number to keep rising in most of the markets we track. Overall, we project an additional 5.34 million people will become USD millionaires by 2029, an increase of almost 9% over 2024."

The trend also leads to a high volume of wealth transfers over the next 20 to 25 years, prompting investors to think about legacy.

"Looking further ahead, we anticipate the volume of wealth transfers from one generation to the next and within the same generation (from widow/er to spouse) to reach US$170 billion ($261bn) over the next few decades, or 1.6% of the country's total personal wealth," UBS said.