By Abby Schultz

More than half of the growth in global financial assets in 2024 was in North America, chiefly the U.S., reflecting a tendency to save by investing in stocks versus tucking money away in a bank, according to an annual global wealth report from Allianz.

That growth to EUR269 trillion ($315 trillion) overall is likely to continue this year as U.S. stock markets trend ever higher, said Arne Holzhausen, head of insurance, wealth, and ESG research at Allianz, the Munich-based global insurer and asset manager. The report, titled "Powering Ahead," was released on Thursday.

Globally, North Americans have held nearly half the financial assets in the world from 2004 to 2024, despite a five-fold increase in China's share (to 14.6%) since 2004. As China's financial wealth has surged, western Europe and Japan have fallen behind. Europe's share of gross global financial assets fell to 18.2% in 2024 from 27.3% a decade earlier, while Japan's fell to 5.3% from 11.1%, the report said.

Those trend-lines are unlikely to change soon, although younger European savers, for instance, are tapping digital tools and fintech providers to invest more in stocks than older generations, who favor bank deposits, Holzhausen told Barron's.

Another striking fact in the data: More than half the growth in gross financial assets in 2024 -- 53.6% -- was in North America. Another 19.8% was generated by China, while western Europe contributed 14.1% of the growth.

"When it comes to financial assets, the U.S. continues to call the shots, " the report said.

That's because 59.2% of portfolios in North America are invested in securities -- stocks, bonds, and investment funds -- compared with just under 35% of portfolios in Europe. Globally, financial assets invested in securities grew by 12% in 2024, while those invested with insurance companies and pensions grew by 6.9% and bank deposits grew by 5.7%, the report said.

Holzhausen doesn't expect global dynamics will drastically change this year. "We have strong stock markets overall," he told Barron's. Despite trade wars and other geopolitical uncertainties, he said that "most economies are doing quite well; even China has stabilized and Germany is recovering."

One driver of this strength is wage growth, "which is why savings continue [to grow] at a high level," Holzhausen added. With support from global stock markets, there's "no reason not to expect another strong year of growth in financial assets."

Yet the report raises a cautionary note, pointing out that stock valuations -- particularly in the U.S. -- are historically high. "This makes the potential for a setback correspondingly large," the report said, adding that "the full impact of U.S. trade policy will only become apparent in the second half of the year."

Holzhausen, however, noted that, so far, the U.S.'s imposition of a wide-range of tariffs hasn't had a dramatic impact on trade volumes. One reason is that countries are finding markets for their goods outside the U.S., with Europe turning to Latin America and Asia, for instance. The European Union recently struck a free trade agreement with Indonesia after nine years of negotiations.

"Because everybody is finding it hard to do trade with the U.S., they'll try much harder to do trade with everyone else," Holzhausen said.

Though the surge in U.S. financial asset growth was particularly strong last year, it follows a trend that began after President Donald Trump's first term when trade conflicts between the U.S. and China effectively marked "the end of uninterrupted globalization," and a stalling of a convergence between richer and poorer countries, the report said.

Growth rates in gross financial assets of emerging economies were on an upswing until 2017 -- Trump's first year in office. Gross financial assets in emerging markets grew at a rate that was 4 percentage points higher than the rate for those in advanced economies in 2024. But that pales against the growth rate experienced in emerging markets in the decade through 2017, when it reached 14 percentage points more than the rate for advanced markets on average, the report said.

Write to Abby Schultz at abby.schultz@barrons.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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September 26, 2025 18:34 ET (22:34 GMT)

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