The overall wealth of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in Malaysia rose by 9.3 percent to US$419.6 billion (RM1.37 billion) last year, based on a report from Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management.
At the same time, the number of super rich individuals here increased by 6.6 percent to 65,800 last year. As a result, the country has the 10th largest population of HNWIs in the Asia Pacific region, said Stefan Mueller, Managing Director at RBC Wealth Management.
In particular, 34 percent of the super rich Malaysians prefer to focus on wealth preservation, while only 30.2 percent are oriented towards growth, noted Mueller, who is also the company’s Head of Investments & Products.
They also favour fixed income over other types of investments, earmarking 23.4 percent of their portfolio for such, compared to the 18.2 percent average for Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan.
“We also see that Malaysia very much invest outside the home market, 40 percent of the assets of these HNWIs are invested outside Malaysia which is quite substantial compared to within Asia Pacific or the rest of the world.”
A key driver for this trend is the abundance of bigger opportunities in other countries.
Moving forward, 84.9 percent of super rich individuals here are confident in their ability to grow their net worth in the near future. They also strongly trust the decision of wealth managers.
However, they gave their wealth managers a score of 60.5 percent based on their performance, which is lower than the APAC average of 67 percent.
Farah Wahida, Editor of PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact her about this or other stories email farahwahida@propertyguru.com.my
