There are now nearly one million millionaire households in the UK
The UK is close to having one million millionaire households, new research out today shows.
In 2015, there were 961,000 UK households with $1m (£0.7m) of private financial wealth, up 12.4 per cent on 2014, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
The UK’s millionaire growth is nearly double the global year-on-year rate of increase, six per cent, and also ahead of the Western Europe average, 11 per cent.
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The UK is the country with the fourth largest number of millionaires, below the US (which has an estimated eight million, flat on 2014), China (2.1m, up 27.3 per cent) and Japan (1.1m, up 8.3 per cent).
| Ranking | Nation | Number of millionaire households (thousands) |
| 1 | US | 8008 |
| 2 | China | 2070 |
| 3 | Japan | 1081 |
| 4 | UK | 961 |
| 5 | Switzerland | 519 |
| 6 | Germany | 446 |
| 7 | France | 445 |
| 8 | Canada | 440 |
| 9 | Italy | 354 |
| 10 | Taiwan | 324 |
The BCG report, aimed at wealth managers, looks at private financial wealth, which is in cash and deposits, mutual funds, listed and unlisted equities, debt securities, life insurance payments and pension entitlements. It does not include investors’ residence and luxury goods.
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The report said growth of global private wealth “hit a speed bump in 2015”, up 5.2 per cent to $168 trillion, “forcing wealth managers to reevaluate their strategies”. Growth between 2013 and 2014 was seven per cent.
In the UK, total private wealth grew by 3.6 per cent to $9.3 trillion.
The report estimated that millionaire households will hold more than half of all global private wealth by 2020, up from 47 per cent in 2015 to 52 per cent.