Allianz, pandemic does not stop global wealth growth, 63 thousand euros for every Italian

The pandemic has ‘done good’ to world wealth, including that of Italians, who – thanks to a relatively low level of personal debt – can boast a net financial assets per capita of 62,775 euros, exactly one thousand more than the Germans. The 12th edition of the Allianz Global Wealth Report, which annually photographs the balance of assets in terms of liquidity, bank deposits , securities and other credits, drawing the scenario of how world wealth changes. That even in the period of Covid – thanks to the liquidity injections decided by governments, from ‘forced’ savings due to lockdown and the recovery of the stock exchanges – it increased and not just a little (+ 9.7%), reaching 200 thousand gross assets billions of euros – equal to 3 times the global GDP – while the net value grew by 11% to 153.500 billion. However, Italy has grown less than the average with an increase of 104 billion in gross financial assets to 4769 billion euros, while the net amount is 3795 billion: more than twice the national GDP, in short, kept in the bank, in the securities, funds or insurance accounts. The difference with the gross is represented by the exposures of Italian families, which between loans and other debts, amounted to 974 billion euros, a value equal to just 59% of GDP and which has been more or less stable for a decade, while In the meantime, ‘real’ wealth has grown by about 1,000 billion, with many greetings to the ‘stagnant’ economy as told abroad. bank deposits, while in the last 20 years the percentage of assets in equities has fallen from 60 to 39%: 25% is in insurance and pension funds and the rest in other forms. investments in the stock market (55% of the total) strengthened – with Wall Street at its all-time high – the hegemonic position of the US in terms of wealth, increasing the distance with the European ‘poor’. The result is that at the end of 2020 the per capita average of financial assets in the United States was 260,580 euros, 7.2 times the global average (35,970) but also almost three times the average in Western Europe (99,720 euros). analysis of the 57 major economies conducted by Allianz shows at a regional level that in 2020 the greatest leap was recorded by Eastern Europe (+ 19.1% thanks to the strong increase in assets in Russia) followed by Asia (excluding Japan) +12, 7% and North America with + 11.6%. But situations like the Russian one, in fact, also conceal strong discrepancies in the redistribution of wealth, with 84 percent of assets in the hands of just the richest 10 percent of the world’s population, while 1% even controls 41. %. Yet twenty years ago – recalls the insurance group – inequalities were even greater with 91% of the financial assets in the hands of 10% of the population. To push global wealth in 2020, despite the Covid crisis were – explains Allianz – “monetary and fiscal policy that mobilized large sums to support the economy, markets and people with a strategy that has proved successful: incomes have stabilized and stock markets have recovered rapidly “. “Thanks to this push, households’ financial assets were able to withstand the crisis” with new savings that “were the main engine of development”, up 78% to € 5,200 billion and inflows on bank accounts almost tripled ( + 187%). In all this, however, Allianz also signals the ‘disappearance’ of the middle class, which for the first time has fallen below 40% of the global population and in some countries – from Germany to the US – is even below 30%: a “gradual disappearance which – reads the Report – suggests a growing polarization of society in matters of wealth that could become socially explosive in the long run”.