Australia has emerged as the most loved nation across the world among the millionaires.
Of the 82,000 millionaires migrated to a different country in 2016, 11,000 landed in the Kangaroo nation. It was followed closely by USA attracting 10,000 HNI and, another 3,000 moved to the UK
The reasons behind HNWIs preferring Australia to USA and the UK is that Australia has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, and its location makes it a good base for doing business in emerging Asian countries such as China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and India.
Further, Australia is relatively immune to the turmoil in the Middle East and the related refugee crisis in Europe and it has lower inheritance taxes than the US and much lower inheritance taxes than the UK.
Millionaires or High Net Worth Individuals (HNWIs) are those people with net assets of USD 1 million or more.
According to New World Wealth's latest report on global wealth and wealth migration trends in 2016, for the second straight year Australia remained the top country worldwide for millionaire inflows, beating out traditional destinations such as the US and the UK.
Other countries that experienced large inflows of HNWIs in 2016 include Canada, UAE, New Zealand and Israel.
On the other hand, countries that lost large numbers of HNWIs in 2016 included France, Turkey and Brazil.
Large outflow of millionaires from France (over 12,000 millionaires is 2016) is notable. France is being heavily impacted by rising religious tensions between Christians and Muslims, especially in urban areas, the report said.
"We expect that millionaire migration away from France will accelerate over the next decade as these tensions escalate," it added.
The report further noted that other European countries where religious tensions are starting to emerge such as Belgium, Germany, Austria, the UK, Holland and Sweden will also be negatively affected in the near future.
"Going forward, we expect HNWI migration into the UK to continue, despite the Brexit. In particular we expect large HNWI inflows from France, China, India, the Middle East and Africa into the UK. However, on the flip side, we do expect some UK HNWIs to move to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US over the next 10 years," the report said.
(With PTI Inputs)
