High Net Worth
Brazil Emerges As LatAm HNW Hotspot - New Research
With an aggregate wealth of $951 billion, Brazil is home to the highest number of high net worth individuals in Latin America and the third highest among BRIC nations, new research shows.
The $951 billion figure represents the just-over 194,000 HNW individuals in Brazil, accounting for about 29 per cent of the country’s total wealth ($3.3 trillion), according to 2011 data from WealthInsight.
The report, Challenges and Opportunities for the wealth sector in Brazil, analyzes the Brazilian wealth management and private banking sector, and the opportunities and challenges it faces.
Overall, the global private banking industry is estimated to have assets under management of just over $16.5 trillion - $250 billion of which stems from the Brazilian wealth management sector, making Brazil the largest Latin America country in terms of AuM.
Banco Itaú controls one quarter of the local private banking market, followed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS, with 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively.
The report also found that some Brazilian cities which are home to a large number of ultra high net worth individuals have no wealth managers or private banking offices based in them - Goiania and Fortaleza, for example. “These cities may therefore offer the greatest potential for the wealth management industry going forward,” it says.
It would appear that Brazil is set to further increase its HNW population. Last year, figures from Wealth-X showed there were 4,725 individuals in Brazil worth at least $30 million, putting it in third spot in comparison to other BRIC nations. At the time, their net worth was at least $260 billion. However, it is worth noting that those figures from Wealth-X were based on UHNW individuals, whereas the current data from WealthInsight covers HNW people.
In another sign that Latin America is emerging as a HNW hotspot, many wealth management firms are launching to tap growth in the continent. For example, last month Mora Wealth Management launched an office in Miami in light of what it described as a “a growing Latin American affluent investor market,” which the firm noted has grown by 18.1 per cent in millionaire wealth since 2007.
