Only 25.8% of India’s wealth is financial: UBS data flags a gap for policymakers

India added 31,033 new US-dollar millionaires in 2025, more than twice mainland China’s 14,079, according to the UBS Global Wealth Report 2026. But the composition of that wealth carries a pattern policymakers will want to watch: even as Indians get richer, they still don’t store their wealth the way Western economies do.

UBS defines wealth as financial assets plus real assets, principally housing, minus debt. Measured that way, only 25.8% of India’s gross personal wealth sits in financial assets, against 78.9% in the US, 68.9% in Japan, 54.9% in South Korea and 51.9% in mainland China — placing India near the bottom of that table.

Equities have gone more mainstream on the back of SIPs, mutual funds, demat accounts and the post-pandemic retail rush, but UBS figures show it remains early days for those instruments. In FY24, household net financial savings came to 5.3% of GDP, while savings in physical assets rose to 13.5%. Nifty 50 total returns have generally run in the low double digits over long periods, with midcap indices higher, while gold compounded at roughly 9-11% a year over the past decade before a 2025-26 price spike pushed returns even higher.

India’s household debt, at 8.2% of gross wealth, sits below mainland China’s 10.6%, the US’s 10.9%, Japan’s 11.9%, Australia’s 18%, the UK’s 20% and Brazil’s 23.4%. That relatively low leverage is reassuring on its own, but combined with the thin financial-asset share, it points to wealth that is deeply concentrated and largely locked away from market instruments.

For policymakers, the stakes are clear: a more financialised base of household wealth would deepen capital markets and put retirement planning on firmer ground, even as India continues to outpace China, Russia, South Korea, Germany and Italy in new millionaire creation.