Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2023

Unique global wealth migration modeling

The data in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Dashboard is supplied by wealth intelligence firm, New World Wealth, and covers key countries in five regions worldwide (Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and CIS, and the Middle East). New World Wealth is currently the only known independent research firm systematically tracking global wealth migration trends between countries and cities.

High-net-worth-individual migration data

It is important to note that the high-net-worth-individual migration figures in the dashboard focus only on people who have truly moved, namely, those who stay in their new country more than half of the year. Many wealthy individuals acquire residence rights for countries but never relocate to those countries. Such individuals are excluded from our figures, which are therefore on the conservative side.

Most migrating high-net-worth individuals do so via work visas, ancestry visas, and family visas or owing to having second passports by birthright. New World Wealth estimates that currently, around 30% opt for investment migration programs to secure residence rights or additional citizenships.

New World Wealth tracks the movements of just over 150,000 high-net-worth individuals worldwide in its in-house database, which is focused on individuals from high value companies who have the following work titles: founder, chairperson, CEO, CIO, president, director, and managing partner. The firm uses various public sources to check city locations, including LinkedIn and other business portals. Its stats are therefore mainly based on the work locations of the individuals.

Note: It should be noted that New World Wealth never gives out the names of the individuals in its database, which it uses purely for in-house statistical studies.

New World Wealth uses the following sources as sanity checks on its data:

• Investment migration program statistics in relevant countries.
• Regular interviews with high-net-worth-individual intermediaries — brokers, wealth managers, and top-end property agents in major destination markets.

Country wealth data 

New World Wealth uses a model to determine the wealth tiers in each country. Key inputs include:

• Wealth data from the firm’s in-house database of high-net-worth individuals
• Stock market statistics in each market
• Real estate statistics in each market, specifically focusing on the number of highly priced homes in each country/city
• Household income, household savings, and household debt statistics in each market
• Tax data, specifically focusing on the number of individuals in each income tier

New World Wealth’s model combines the above metrics to calculate the total wealth held in each country and to determine the number of people in each wealth tier. For the top wealth tiers, namely centi-millionaires and billionaires, the firm predominantly relies on its in-house database of high-net-worth individuals.

New World Wealth also maps countries’ historical wealth growth trends by considering:

• Currency movements versus the US dollar
• Stock market movements
• Residential property price movements

Note: It should be noted that the bulk of the average high-net-worth individual’s wealth is tied up in residential property and equities. Large movements in these two segments therefore heavily impact on the total wealth held in a country.

Wealth versus GDP

We consider wealth to be a far better measure of the financial health of an economy than GDP. The reasons for this include:

• In many developing countries, a large portion of GDP flows to the government and therefore has little impact on private wealth creation.
• GDP counts items multiple times. For instance, if someone is paid USD 100 for a product/service and they then pay someone else that same USD 100 for another product/service, that adds USD 200 to a country’s GDP, despite the fact that only USD 100 was produced at the start.
• GDP ignores the efficiency of a country’s local banking sector and the local stock market in retaining wealth in a country.
• GDP largely ignores the impact of property and stock market moves, yet these two factors clearly have a significant impact on wealth.
• GDP is a relatively static measure that tends to move only slightly year on year. It also has a time lag.

Wealth figures, on the other hand, have none of these limitations, making them a far more accurate gauge of the financial health of an economy than its GDP figures.

Wealth definitions

About New World Wealth

New World Wealth was established in 2013 and has been tracking the movements and spending habits of the world’s wealthiest people for almost a decade. The firm has an impressive track record in providing robust, reliable private wealth data and insights for key publications, such as Knight Frank’s Wealth Report, AfrAsia Bank’s Global Wealth Migration Review and Henley & Partners’ Africa Wealth Report, The Centi-Millionaire Report, and USA Wealth Report,. Its reports and findings have been referenced by the Australian and UK Governments, as well as by global news outlets such as the BBC, CNN, Forbes, Bloomberg and the New York Times.

Disclaimer: All the data available in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Dashboard is licensed by New World Wealth. Henley & Partners Group Holdings Ltd is not responsible for its correctness. The data posted in the Henley Private Wealth Migration Dashboard is freely accessible for private non-commercial use only.