Wealth Management Essay

886 Words2 Pages

Wealth management is broadly defined as financial services in mass market with varied combinations of personal investment management, financial advisory, and planning disciplines that are offered to high net worth individuals (HNWI) and their families ("Definition of Wealth Management,"). Traditionally, wealth management services are only offered by private-banking sector. The onset of financial liberalization and innovation in recent years have changed and transformed the wealth management landscape from basic savings services in banks, investment-centric services on bonds, equities and unit trusts to a comprehensive asset management services that enhance most needs of high net worth individuals (Seng, 2005). Asset management services mainly …show more content…

According to World Wealth Management Report in 2015, high net worth individuals distribute their financial asset into a few categories such as alternative investments, fixed income, real estate, equities, and cash/deposits. For alternative investment, it breaks down with structured products, hedge funds, derivatives, foreign currency, commodities and private funds. HNWIs in emerging market and mature Asia which includes Malaysia have high level of concern on wealth-related factors such as assets lasting and the impact on economy activities affect their ability to meet their financial goals (Wilson, 2015).There is a growing demand for wealth management services especially from the younger generation (Baharom, 2013). Younger generation nowadays increases their expectations on wealth …show more content…

As one of the countries in Mature Asia, Malaysia has one of the smallest HNWI populations of 10 countries (Menon, 2012). Yet the number of HNWIs in Malaysia is expected to nearly double from 32,000 in 2010 to 68,000 in 2015. According to Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2015, about 23.4% of the sources of HNWI wealth assets are derived from business ownership that includes the sale of businesses. The trending of wealth management has transformed basic savings to more combinations of various investment products. As affluence grows, wealth portfolio is not only limited to fixed deposit but it has diversified into various types of investments such as real-estate, unit trust and structured products like equity-linked notes. Based on the Asia Pacific Wealth Report 2015, allocation of financial assets is divided into cash and cash equivalent (24%), equity (18.7%), real estate (22.8%), fixed income (16.7%) and alternative investment (13.1%). Due to liberalization of financial market in Malaysia, many consumers mainly the young generations are better equipped with financial literacy, are focused on structured products, insurance and bonds. Besides, the Malaysian government had made it compulsory that all employees must contribute to Employee Provident Fund (EPF) to accumulate wealth for retirement. Yet, due to rising cost of living in Malaysia, EPF is inadequate for people especially low income group people to retire.

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