India home to 1.98 lakh millionaires: World Wealth Report 2015

New Delhi: India has become home to 11th largest population of millionaires with 1.98 lakh such high networth individuals, as falling oil prices and "constructive" election results helped the country post the biggest gains in terms of their number and total wealth during 2014. India recorded the largest gains for the region and globally  for HNWI (high networth individuals) population (26.3 per cent) and wealth (28.2 per cent).   

"The election of a popular reform minded prime minister helped to boost investor confidence and contributed to strong performance in the stock market, with a 21.9 per cent increase in the MSCI Index. Lower oil prices helped reduce country's budget deficit and retail inflation fell considerably," the report said. "All these events helped India moved up to third place for HNWI wealth across Asia Pacific, displacing Australia, which suffered from a significant 7.6 per cent decline in    equity markets," it added.   

According to the 'World Wealth Report 2015', released by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management, there were 1,98,000 HNWIs in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 1,56,000. India has been raked 11th in the list of countries with    highest number of HNWI population. The US topped the chart with 43,51,000 millionaires, followed by Japan 24,52,000, Germany (11,41,000) and China (8,90,000) in the second, third and fourth place respectively.

The top four countries account for 60.3 per cent of the total worldwide HNWI population. Globally in 2014, strong economic and equity market performance helped to create 920,000 new millionaires. The number of High Net Worth Individuals grew to 14.6 million, while their collective wealth surged to USD 56.4 trillion. Since 2006, Asia Pacific dominated HNWI growth and of the    USD 7.4 trillion of HNWI wealth added in Asia Pacific since 2006, India and China accounted for an impressive 43 per cent.  

"Continued growth is expected to result in India and China holding over 10 per cent of all global HNWI wealth by  2017," the report said. "Asia-Pacific continues its tremendous run in wealth creation and doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon," said Barend Janssens, head, RBC Wealth Management - Asia. China and India, in particular, have propelled Asia-Pacific HNWI wealth growth in recent years and are expected to continue to act as key drivers, both in the region and globally.  

Looking further ahead, HNWI wealth is expected to expand more in Asia-Pacific than in any other region of the world  with much of the new wealth expected to come from the emerging  economies of China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, the report    said.