According to a recent study by Allianz, inflation and the consequences of the war in Ukraine are causing assets to shrink worldwide. This is the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. The Germans, who successfully took refuge in shares during the corona pandemic, are not spared this time either.
The consequences of the Ukraine war with high inflation and the tightening of monetary policy are likely to reduce people's wealth worldwide for the first time in a long time. The insurer Allianz announced that a decline in global financial assets of more than two percent is to be expected for the current year. That would be the first notable loss of wealth since the 2008 financial crisis. Adjusted for prices, households could lose a tenth of their wealth.
Allianz chief economist Ludovic Subran also assesses the prospects as rather gloomy. While the financial crisis was followed by a relatively quick recovery, Subran expects financial assets to grow by just 4.6 percent in nominal terms over the next three years to 2025.
In 2021, financial assets had increased by 10.4 percent to 233 trillion euros worldwide. In Germany, private households benefited last year from the booming stock markets, which many had discovered for themselves during the pandemic. Overall, according to Allianz calculations, the gross financial assets of German households grew by 8.5 percent last year, which was the strongest growth since the turn of the millennium, and it was also above the average growth in Western Europe (plus 6.7 percent). The savers in Germany bought shares and investment funds in the amount of 135 billion euros - 53 percent more than in the already strong year 2020.
Germany, too, will not be able to escape the negative trend, it said: This year, financial assets in this country should also decline by more than two percent. In its thirteenth Global Wealth Report, Allianz takes into account cash, bank deposits, securities and claims against insurance companies and pension funds, but not real estate.
