Allianz Global Wealth Report 2026: Markets Drive Record Wealth as AI Raises the Stakes

Markets on Autopilot: Global financial assets rose 8.6% to a record EUR268.4trn, with markets generating 4 in 5 euros of additional wealth.

· Portfolios set the tone: Securities grew 12.4%, more than twice as fast as deposits or insurance and pensions.

· AI raises the stakes: AI could power the next wave of wealth creation, but high valuations and concentrated ownership raise both market and distributional risks

· Romania’s markets subtract, not add: Financial assets rose just 5.4% in 2025 and fell 1.8% in real terms, as falling securities prices offset strong fresh savings – a rare reversal in a year when markets powered gains almost everywhere else.

The 17th edition of the Allianz “Global Wealth Report,” which puts the asset and debt situation of households in almost 60 countries under the microscope, shows that global household wealth hit a new record in 2025, while market gains and the rise of AI are making asset ownership increasingly important in determining who benefits from future wealth creation.

Markets, not savings, powering the gain

Global financial assets increased by 8.6% in 2025 to a record EUR268.4trn, despite a challenging geopolitical and economic backdrop. Markets did the heavy lifting in 2025, as rising asset prices accounted for roughly 4 out of every 5 euros of new household wealth. Fresh savings fell 5.4% to EUR4.1trn. “Global wealth set another record in 2025, but that only tells half of the story,” said Ludovic Subran, Chief Economist and Chief Investment Officer at Allianz. “Since 2019, nominal financial assets are up 50%, but in real terms, stripped of inflation, they only grew 23%. The situation is worse in Western Europe where financial assets in real terms are up 0.5% compared to 2019. It is 21% in North America and 70% in China.”

Portfolios set the tone

Portfolio composition increasingly determines who captures the gains from wealth creation. Securities increased by 12.4% in 2025, more than twice as fast as deposits (5.7%) or insurance and pensions (5.0%), pushing their share of global financial assets to a record 46.9%. North American households, with 60.7% of their portfolios invested in securities, benefited particularly strongly from rising markets; their region generated 51.4% of the global increase in financial assets. Over the past decade, valuation gains accounted for 71% of North American financial-asset growth, compared with only 36% in Western Europe, reflecting the importance of investing savings over holding them in low-earning accounts.

Media Release: Allianz Global Wealth Report 2026: Markets Drive Record Wealth as AI Raises the Stakes

2026-27: AI as a swing factor amid slowing GDP growth

We estimate that global financial assets could grow by a solid 9% in 2026, but the medium-term backdrop is turning tougher as slower growth, persistent inflation, fragmentation and high public debt weigh on returns. Going forward, AI is therefore the key swing factor: stronger productivity and earnings could sustain asset returns, but the growing reliance on AI-powered markets to drive household wealth also creates vulnerability. With the S&P 500 up around 95% since end-2022, much of the recent wealth boost rests on elevated market valuations and AI expectations. We find that a 25% correction in the S&P 500 would erase around USD27trn of US household wealth in the year of the shock, equivalent to almost 14% of total net worth, weighing on confidence and consumption, and pushing the US economy into recession.

But the AI wealth story is not only about how much wealth is created, it is also about who captures the gains. “AI could become the next great wealth engine, but the key question is who gets a stake in it,” said Katharina Utermöhl, Head of Thematic & Policy Research at Allianz Research. “As AI potentially shifts more value creation towards capital, broader participation in capital returns and policies that help workers adjust will be key to making the AI wealth dividend more widely shared.”

Romania: A rare case where markets subtracted from wealth

The financial assets of Romanian households increased by 5.4% in 2025 to EUR268.6bn, a sharp deceleration from 10.0% growth in 2024. This was well below both the Eastern European average of 11.2% and the global average of 8.6%. Insurance and pensions grew by 31.3% – their strongest increase since 2009 – while deposits increased by 7.4%. Securities, by contrast, fell by 8.2%, reducing their share of Romanian portfolios from 36.6% to 31.8%, below the Eastern European average of 35.9%. The share of insurance and pension assets rose correspondingly from 13.8% to 17.1%.

Fresh savings fell by 20.9% to EUR22.1bn, but still reached their second-highest level on record after the 2024 peak. They were distributed relatively evenly across insurance and pensions (30.3%), deposits (30.7%) and securities (23.7%). Overall, valuation losses of EUR8.4bn offset part of the EUR22.1bn in fresh savings, leaving a net increase of just EUR13.7bn in gross financial assets. The losses were equivalent to 61% of the final increase in wealth – a sharp contrast with the global picture, where markets generated around 80% of the gain.

Adjusted for inflation, Romanian financial assets fell by 1.8% in 2025 – the only decline among the EU countries in Eastern Europe. Since 2019, however, real financial assets have increased by a cumulative 17.6%, although this remained below the Eastern European average of 24.5%.

Household liabilities rose by 5.3% to EUR66.1bn, broadly in line with assets. Net financial assets consequently increased by 5.4% to EUR202.5bn, while the liabilities-to-assets ratio remained broadly unchanged at 24.6%. With net financial assets of EUR10,710 per capita, Romania ranked 41st among the countries covered in 2025, slipping one place from 2024 but remaining one position higher than in 2005