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Beijing – June 20, 2017 – The Chinese private wealth market has continued to skyrocket. The number of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) with at least RMB 10 million (about $1.5 million) of investable assets have increased dramatically from 180,000 in 2006 to about 1.6 million in 2016, representing an expansion of more than eight-fold within just a decade. This growth includes about 120,000 ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) – those with at least RMB 100 million in investable assets – up from less than 10,000 in 2006.

In total, China’s private wealth has swelled to RMB 165 trillion (about $24 trillion) – six times the level it was in 2006, according to the fifth China Private Wealth Report developed by Bain & Company in collaboration with China Merchants Bank, a leading private banking brand in China and one of the country's leading retail banks. The ever growing pool of private wealth is also roughly twice the size of the country’s GDP and represents one of the fastest-growing accumulations of wealth in modern history.

 The report finds that as China's wealthy continue to grow richer and more numerous, they've also become more diverse in terms of segmentation, more geographically dispersed and they have more diversified wealth goals.

Key Report Findings:

• While HNWIs remain concentrated in major cities and coastal areas, 22 of mainland China’s 34 provinces now each have at least 20,000 wealthy individuals.
• In 2009, nearly half of HNWIs ranked “wealth creation” or “quality of life” as their top priorities from a list of seven objectives. Today most respondents name “wealth preservation” and “wealth inheritance” as their main goals.
• About 40 percent of UHNWIs would consider using family offices for asset allocation management, wealth preservation and inheritance, tax planning, legal consultation, and business inheritance planning.
• The percentage of HNWIs surveyed with overseas allocation has increased from 19 percent in 2011 to 56 percent in 2017, but the overall percentage of assets allocated overseas has levelled off.
• Today, 63 percent of China’s wealthy rely on financial services providers to manage their domestic financial assets, and among that group, about half use private banking services provided by commercial banks.
• When selecting wealth managers, HNWIs value the institution’s reputation above all else, with 61 percent ranking “brand and trust” as the most important criteria, while 58 percent selected “expertise.”