This year will be a “turning point” for the world’s wealth
market, which has fully recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and will see the addition of 500,000 new millionaires each
year between now and 2017, according to Datamonitor Financial’s new white paper, The
Global Wealth Market 2013.

The paper predicts that the number of global millionaires
will hit 9.9 million by 2017, with the US and Asia-Pacific regions
expected to surface as the strongest performers. Significant growth is also
expected in Latin America, it said. 

Investor confidence has returned, and reduced stock market
volatility is expected to re-balance global asset allocation, with deposits and
bonds allocation dropping to its lowest value since the onset of the
financial crisis, the paper says.

“However, crisis-ridden Europe and forever stagnant Japan
are expected to experience minimal growth during the same period with emerging
markets continuing to put pressure on their western European counterparts,” says
Matia Grossi, senior analyst – private wealth management at Datamonitor
Financial.

“One of the main remaining question marks is over Europe, where a dramatic turn of events – such as the
collapse of the euro – could send the world economy back to a 2008-like
crisis,” Grossi explained. “However, given the slow, step-by-step approach that
the European bureaucrats have adopted in recent years to try to solve the
crisis, this is unlikely.”

According to the annual RBC Wealth Management/Capgemini World Wealth
Report, North America, which
in 2011 had lost its top-dog status to Asia-Pacific, is now back as the place
with the largest high net worth market. North America has
a total population of 3.73 million HNW individuals, compared with
3.68 million in Asia-Pacific. In North America, HNW total assets stood at $12.7
trillion, while in Asia they stood at $12
trillion.

Meanwhile, the global wealth market is
currently worth $71 trillion – an impressive $15 trillion more than in
2008, Datamonitor's latest figures show.