British households have largely missed the market rally that drove global wealth to a record in 2025, and that leaves the UK in an unusual position if the AI boom behind it goes into reverse.
Global household financial assets rose 8.6% to a record €268.4 trillion in 2025, according to Allianz Research's 17th annual Global Wealth Report. Rising asset prices generated roughly four out of every five euros of new wealth, while fresh household savings fell 5.4% to €4.1 trillion. After inflation, the picture is more modest: nominal assets are up 50% since 2019, but real wealth grew only 23%.
Western Europe has gained least from that growth. Real financial assets in the region ended 2025 just 0.5% above their 2019 level, according to Allianz Research. Over the same period, real financial assets rose 70% in China, 40% in Asia excluding Japan and China, and 21% in North America. Western Europe was the only region to stagnate in real terms.
The UK sits at the lower end of the European pack. Net financial assets per capita stood at €72,200 in 2025, ranking the UK 18th globally and below most of its Western European peers.
The gap is largely one of allocation. European households, British ones included, hold a far smaller share of their portfolios in securities than North American households do. Valuation gains accounted for 71% of North American financial asset growth over the past decade, against 36% in Western Europe. Saving more does not build wealth when savings sit in low-yielding deposits rather than capital markets.
That cautious allocation has a side effect. A sharp correction in AI-linked equities would not hit UK household balance sheets with the same direct force it would in the US, where far more household wealth is held in shares. Few British households have ridden the rally, so fewer would feel its reversal directly.
The UK would still be exposed through other channels. A US-led correction would spread through trade, credit conditions and business confidence, reaching UK commercial lines books and D&O and financial lines portfolios in particular. UK pension schemes and insurers' investment portfolios also hold global equities, so the balance sheets behind pensions and annuities would not be spared.
The global data points to a structural shift away from insurance and pension products. Insurance and pension assets grew only 5.0% worldwide in 2025, less than half the rate of securities, which rose 12.4%. Their share of global financial assets fell to a record low of 24.8%, down 7.4 percentage points from 2005. In the decade before the pandemic, insurance and pension products attracted an average of 44% of new household savings each year, according to Allianz Research. In 2025, that share was 22.4%.
The UK's challenge is different. Here, the problem is less that savers are moving from pensions into equities, and more that too much household money sits in cash, earning little. For life, pensions and protection providers, and the advisers who work with them, the Allianz data reinforces the case for long-term, invested savings. It also shows how far UK households have fallen behind peers who took on more market exposure.
The Allianz report also raises a longer-run question about AI and jobs. Allianz Research estimates that AI could affect approximately one in four jobs across major economies over the next three years, through reorganisation (10% of jobs), augmentation (5%) and displacement (8%). If productivity gains flow mainly to profits rather than wages, asset owners capture a disproportionate share. For UK households with limited market exposure, that could widen existing wealth gaps.
"AI could become the next great wealth engine, but the key question is who gets a stake in it," said Katharina Utermoehl, head of thematic and policy research at Allianz Research.
Allianz Research projects that global financial assets will grow by around 9% in 2026, before settling at 5% to 6% a year over the medium term. For UK brokers and underwriters, the report points to two exposures: indirect correction risk to commercial and financial lines books, and a domestic savings gap that leaves British households less wealthy but also less directly exposed than their US counterparts.
