Global millionaire migration will continue to grow and the year 2023 may expect the largest movement on record, according to Henley & Partners.
Around 125,000 millionaire movement is expected to happen in 2023 and it will become the largest migration flows on record, Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners told finews.asia. If this prediction is accurate, the growth in private wealth migration over the past decade will have increased by 145 percent despite the two-year pandemic plummet.
When compared to 2021, the firm noted a 60 percent increase overall in the number of applications it received throughout this year. And since the first Covid reported three years ago, the firm received more than double the increase in inquiries and applications from the HNWIs. «And it does not appear to be tapering off,» he said.
Singapore Inflows
With its long reputation as a money inflow destination in Asia, Singapore received 2,600 HNWIs inflows for the year to date in September 2022. This number may not stop there, as the total inflows are expected to reach 2,800 or even 3,000 for the full year.
Along with this record, the city-state is ranked second after Dubai, for the global cities that received HNWI inflows in 2022. When ranked by number of HNWIs, Singapore also sits as the second wealthiest city in Asia after Tokyo, Volek said. Meanwhile, in the earlier report by Henley & Partners, Singapore’s Raffles Hotel is even mentioned as the top 10 popular hotels for the centi-millionaires.
Chinese Outflows
While Singapore and Dubai see heavy inflows of HNWIs, China is sitting at the other side of the table with a net loss of 7,200 HNWIs moved out, based on year-to-date numbers in October 2022. By the end of this year, the HNWIs outflow is expected to reach 10,000.
The rising HNWIs outflow is running concurrently with the growing investment migration inquiries by Chinese nationals, in which Henley & Partners noted 2022 as a record year. By the end of November 2022, Henley & Partners noted an increase of 83 percent in inquiries when compared to the full year 2021. The biggest shift occurred in the second quarter of 2022, with a leap of 96 percent compared to the first quarter of this year.
Hong Kong Protests
However, the HNWIs outflows from China actually reached its peak in 2019 at around 15,000 in total. «Enquiry levels were relatively consistent apart from a jump in Q4 2019, at the time of the Hong Kong protests,» Volek said.
Once again, Singapore is sitting on the top five and ranked three for investment migration programs enquired by Chinese nationals. The first rank is occupied by Portugal, followed by Greece. Meanwhile, Grenada and Malta are trailing behind Singapore.
