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Australia became a millionaire factory in 2021. The number of millionaires skyrocketed 31 per cent from an estimated 485,000 to 635,000 — the biggest rise in recent history.
And those 635,000 millionaires lifted the value of the net value assets they own, outside the family home, from $2 trillion to 2.77 trillion, a jump of 37 per cent. To that you can add the rise in the family home value which was excluded from the survey
These remarkable statistics come from a survey of Australia’s high net worth investors commissioned by platform provider, ASX-listed Praemium and carried out by Investment Trends. The annual survey has been conducted for more than a decade and includes investments in self managed funds. Until 2021 the number of millionaires has been rising at a slow pace and some years it has fallen.
In my view, a key contributor to the explosion was Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe who sent interest rates down to token levels dramatically pushing up the value of the property and shares owned by high net worth individuals.
The Praemium/Investment Trends survey provides an insight as to where high net worth individuals invest their money; the way they see the future and social issues; and the distribution of wealth among them
At the low end of the high net worth range — fortunes of between $1m and $2.5m — the numbers exploded with an estimated 150, 000 newly minted millionaires being created in the past 12 months taking the net total in the $1-2.5m category to 369,000 people owning $600bn in assets
In the next category, there are 266,000 Australians with a net worth of between $2.5m and $5m but only 87,000 are in the $5m to $10m range. A select 28,000 have a net worth above $10m
