Global financial assets rise to record high in 2025

Global household financial assets increased by 8.6 per cent to a record high of £228trn last year, with markets generating around four fifths of the improvement, a report from Allianz has revealed.

Its Global Wealth Report, which analyses the assets and debts of households across nearly 60 countries, argued that market gains and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) were making asset ownership increasingly important in determining who benefits from future wealth creation.

“Global wealth set another record in 2025, but that only tells half of the story,” said Allianz chief economist and chief investment officer, Ludovic Subran.

Subran noted that, since 2019, nominal financial assets were up by 50 per cent.

However, in real terms when stripped of inflation, they only grew by 23 per cent, with the situation worse in Western Europe where financial assets in real terms were up 0.5 per cent from 2019.

By comparison, North America and China saw increases of 21 per cent and 70 per cent respectively.

In the UK, net financial assets per capita increased by 2 per cent to around £61,300.

However, this was a lower growth rate than many of its peers, and the country fell from eighth to 18th on the ranking of countries’ net financial assets per capita between 2005 and 2025.

The global increase in 2025 was driven by securities, which rose by 12.4 per cent, more than twice as fast as deposits (5.7 per cent) or insurance and pensions (5 per cent).

The share of global financial assets in securities reached a record 46.9 per cent last year.

Allianz forecast that global financial assets could increase by 9 per cent in 2026, but warned that the medium-term backdrop was “turning tougher” amid slower growth, persistent inflation, fragmentation, and high public debt.

AI was identified as a key ‘swing factor’, as stronger productivity and earnings could sustain asset returns, although the growing reliance on AI-powered markets to drive household wealth could create vulnerability.

“AI could become the next great wealth engine, but the key question is who gets a stake in it,” said Allianz Research head of thematic & policy research, Katharina Utermöhl.

“As AI potentially shifts more value creation towards capital, broader participation in capital returns and policies that help workers adjust will be key to making the AI wealth dividend more widely shared.”

---