This is the second chapter of a four-part annual report on the global wealth industry and the trends shaping its future. The full 2026 Global Wealth Report: The Great Reordering is available as a PDF download.
Picture a 38-year-old software entrepreneur in Mumbai, a construction company owner in São Paulo, a logistics director in Ho Chi Minh City. Each has crossed the threshold from the mass-affluent middle class into a new financial reality, with half a million dollars, perhaps more, sitting largely in a bank deposit account, earning little, invested in almost nothing. Most have yet to find anyone who can support them in doing more with it.
All told, emerging markets will add $12 trillion of financial wealth and account for roughly 10% of global wealth growth between now and the end of the decade. The affluent-and-above segment—individuals with over $250,000 in financial wealth—is forecast to grow at an average of 8% annually in these markets through 2030, adding over 1 million dollar millionaires by 2030.
The growth is concentrated but broad. India alone will add more than $2 trillion in total wealth by 2030, followed by Brazil at $1 trillion and Mexico at $600 billion. (See Exhibit 1.) Strong GDP growth, rising domestic savings rates, and expanding affluent and middle classes are all driving this acceleration. The wealth management ecosystem has yet to catch up, and that is where the opportunity lies.
The Segment Nobody Is Serving
The most attractive segment for wealth managers is the affluent and emerging high-net-worth (HNW) tier, broadly defined as clients with $250,000 to $5 million in investable assets. In emerging markets, this group is large, growing fast, and structurally underserved. They have outgrown standard deposit products, particularly as interest rates fall, but do not yet qualify for the full-service models that international wealth managers reserve for larger clients. And the international players in many emerging markets are pulling back. Rising compliance costs, tighter cross-border requirements, and a broader push to reduce complexity have led global wealth managers to concentrate on clients with $5 million and above, leaving the affluent and lower HNW segment increasingly to local players.
Local offerings, meanwhile, have not kept pace. Investment product shelves are often thin, provider choice is limited, and service models remain closer to retail banking than true wealth management. Clients with real investable assets and growing financial sophistication are looking for more, and in many markets not yet finding it.
How large the opportunity is will depend on market maturity. That in turn is shaped by the depth and financialization of local capital markets, the breadth of the local wealth management ecosystem, the sophistication of available investment products, and the quality of the regulatory and legal environment. We benchmarked these factors across the top 20 emerging markets to derive an overall maturity score, grouping countries along a spectrum from early-stage to more advanced.
Plotted against projected wealth growth, that spectrum shows that high-growth, low-maturity markets such as Vietnam offer the greatest potential to build new capabilities, while more developed markets like Brazil and Malaysia offer greater scale but demand more differentiated propositions to win. (See Exhibit 2.)
Two Players, One Race
Retail banks are well placed to capture the affluent and HNW opportunity in emerging markets. The top retail banks hold at least two-thirds of the total deposit base in most of these locales, maintain broad geographic reach, carry strong brand recognition, and already have relationships with the very clients they need to serve.
Yet many banks have been remarkably slow to convert those advantages into wealth management propositions. What passes for a premium offering at many emerging market banks often amounts to priority call center access, better credit cards, and lifestyle perks but little by way of investment products or financial advice. The deeper problem is structural. Frontline staff remain heavily incentivized around deposit collection. The motivation to move a client’s savings off the balance sheet into investments rarely exists. The result is a service model that falls well short of what this segment demands.
Retail banks that build a serious wealth management proposition can drive both growth and profitability. Affluent and HNW clients typically represent less than 10% of their client base but contribute 40% to 50% of deposits. And even more cash is unbanked. Capturing a meaningful share of these assets could accelerate growth in fee revenues by more than 50% over five years. Because investment assets are largely off-balance-sheet, the incremental revenue and profit from wealth management improves return on equity without requiring significant additional capital. In an era of margin pressure and tighter lending growth, that is a compelling story.
Affluent and high-net-worth clients typically represent less than 10% of retail banks' client base but contribute 40% to 50% of deposits.
How Retail Banks Have Done It Before
South Africa and Brazil, today among the more sophisticated wealth management markets in their respective regions, built their ecosystems from a similar starting point—deposit-focused banking systems with thin investment offerings and revenues driven largely by lending. The transformation tracked the maturation of local capital markets. As the investable universe broadened, banks had something beyond deposits to offer clients, and the distribution scale of banks gave those markets a retail channel. The co-evolution of banks and capital markets is what made it work, and the pattern it produced is consistent enough to serve as a practical template for markets at an earlier stage.
The progression typically unfolds in three stages. (See Exhibit 3.) Banks start by defining their target client and building the basics. This means segmenting the retail base, establishing simple entry products, and putting in place the foundational risk and compliance framework. From there, the focus shifts to expanding the offering and scaling the client base, bringing in local equities and international investments, introducing portfolio-based advisory, and building out the digital and CRM infrastructure to support growth. The third stage is deeper differentiation, adding proprietary products, discretionary portfolio management, alternatives, and the data and automation capabilities that allow personalization at scale.
Getting the product and technology infrastructure right does not require building everything in-house. External partnerships—with asset managers for portfolio construction and digital brokers as white-label execution platforms—can accelerate time to market considerably. Alongside these, scalable digital processes covering onboarding, risk profiling, suitability, and portfolio monitoring form the operational foundation. Over time, a clear buy-or-build framework for these core processes becomes increasingly important, allowing banks to sequence more advanced in-house capability as the franchise matures.
Speed matters more than completeness in the early stages. Initial offerings focus on what can be launched within six to 12 months, typically basic investment access and straightforward advisory. Defining a clear offering roadmap and target operating model from the outset keeps the build-out coherent as the range expands toward alternatives and structured products over time.
What Distinguishes Leading Banks
The banks pulling ahead are building capability in parallel with market development. They focus on a few key actions:
- Anchor the proposition in trust. In markets where investment culture is still developing, clients need to feel confident that their bank is acting in their interest. Safety, transparency, and institutional credibility are what move clients from deposits to investments and what newer, faster-moving competitors find difficult to replicate at scale.
- Redesign incentives around investment growth. The structural bias toward deposit collection is one of the most persistent obstacles to change. Shifting toward fee-generating, off-balance-sheet investment growth requires deliberate redesign of frontline incentives and sustained commitment from senior leadership.
- Define the target segment sharply. Upper affluent and HNW clients want something meaningfully different from standard retail banking. The proposition needs to reflect that clearly, built around converting the existing client base rather than chasing new relationships.
- Invest seriously in relationship managers. Moving from product sales to advisory requires significant upskilling, better tooling, and incentive alignment around assets under management. Retail relationship managers referring their best clients to dedicated wealth units also need to remain adequately incentivized. Without that, the referral model breaks down.
- Continuously build out the product shelf and digital experience. A curated investment offering supported by strong digital journeys—onboarding, risk profiling, suitability, portfolio monitoring—is the operational backbone of a scalable wealth management business, and one that needs to keep pace with rising client expectations and a maturing market.
The emerging market wealth opportunity is large, accelerating, and underdeveloped. Retail banks have the relationships and trust to lead, provided they are willing to make the internal changes that wealth management requires. Independent wealth managers will continue to play a distinct role, leveraging their speed and product flexibility to serve more sophisticated client segments that traditional banks have yet to reach. The institutions that capture clients now, as wealth creation accelerates, will be best placed to deepen those relationships as financial sophistication follows.
