Millionaires are looking to crypto world

The combined wealth of the world’s millionaires rose for a sixth straight year and topped $70 trillion for the first time ever in 2017 thanks to an improving global economy and strong stock market performance, according to a new report released Tuesday.

Capgemeni, a Paris-based business consulting corporation, defines HNWIs as people with at least $1 million available to invest, outside of asset holdings such as real estate, automobiles, and art. The number of high net worth individuals (HNWI) grew almost 10 percent, or 1.6 million, to 18.1 million in 2017.

“High net worth individuals around the world enjoyed investment returns above 20 percent for the second year in a row,” Anirban Bose, head of Capgemini’s financial services global strategic business unit, said in a statement. The report’s analysis confirms that “global HNWI wealth would exceed $100 trillion by 2025,” Bose wrote.

The United States, Japan, Germany and China are the four largest markets for millionaires, accounting for 61 percent of the world’s high net worth individuals.

The U.S. leads the pack with 5.3 million HNWIs, a 10 percent increase from 2016.

But the Asia-Pacific region has the most HNWI millionaires overall as Japan saw a 9 percent increase (3.2 million), China 11 percent (1.3 million) and India 20 percent (263,000).

The report researches trends among the wealthy through market research, data analysis and a survey of more than 2,600 HNWIs across 19 countries.

Only around 56 percent of millionaires say they are connected “very well” with their wealth managers, short of the 70 percent level the French business consulting group calls a passing grade.

Rich people’s enthusiasm for digital currencies swelled last year, with 29 percent of millionaires expressing a high degree of interest in buying or holding cryptocurrencies and nearly 27 percent somewhat interested, the survey found.