AI is reshaping global wealth - and Canada is climbing the ranks

Canada has risen to seventh globally in net financial assets per capita, but a new report warns that artificial intelligence is becoming both the engine and the fault line of wealth creation

Global household financial assets reached a record EUR268.4 trillion in 2025, climbing 8.6 per cent from the prior year, but Allianz Research is warning that artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping who benefits from that growth, with concentrated ownership and elevated market valuations creating risks as much as opportunity.

"Global wealth set another record in 2025, but that only tells half of the story," said Ludovic Subran, Chief Economist and Chief Investment Officer at Allianz. "Since 2019, nominal financial assets are up 50%, but in real terms, stripped of inflation, they only grew 23%. The situation is worse in Western Europe where financial assets in real terms are up 0.5% compared to 2019. It is 21% in North America and 70% in China."

Canada climbs the global wealth rankings

Among the Allianz Global Wealth Report 2026 report's most notable findings for Canadian wealth managers and financial planners is Canada's improved standing in the global rankings.

Canada ranked seventh globally in net financial assets per capita in 2025, at EUR135,350 - up from eleventh place in 2005, representing a significant two-decade climb. On a gross basis, Canada also ranked seventh at EUR187,230 per capita. The country's household debt-to-GDP ratio of 103.3 per cent keeps it below the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan and Sweden on the net wealth ranking, but the trajectory is clear: Canadian household wealth has grown substantially relative to peer nations.

This aligns with domestic data showing Canadian household net worth climbed to a record $18.6 trillion in early 2026 even as debt loads continued to rise. The Allianz report reinforces the structural story already playing out in Canada, that markets, not savings, are increasingly doing the heavy lifting.

Globally, fresh savings fell 5.4 per cent to EUR4.1 trillion in 2025. For every five euros of new wealth created, four came from rising asset valuations rather than new money put to work.

 In North America, new savings dropped 17.5 per cent, but the region generated 51.4 per cent of the entire global increase in financial assets, because its portfolios are heavily tilted toward securities. According to Allianz Research, North American households allocated 60.7 per cent of their financial assets to equities, bonds and investment funds, which rose 12.4 per cent in 2025 - more than twice as fast as bank deposits (up 5.7 per cent) or insurance and pension assets (up 5.0 per cent) for the third consecutive year in a row.

Portfolio composition is the decisive variable

Over the past decade, valuation gains accounted for 71 per cent of North American financial-asset growth, against just 36 per cent in Western Europe. Germany provides an instructive counterpoint - it achieved similar annual asset growth to North America, but required new savings at nearly twice the rate to get there, with only 31 per cent of its 2025 growth coming from valuation gains, compared with approximately 80 per cent globally.

The debate about whether markets or savings drive Canadian wealth is no longer academic. Securities - including shares, bonds and investment funds - now account for a record 46.9 per cent of global financial assets, up 7.4 percentage points since 2005. The S&P 500 has risen approximately 95 per cent since the end of 2022, according to Allianz Research.

AI as a swing factor - for wealth and for risk

Allianz Research projects global financial assets will grow a further nine per cent in 2026, once again above the long-term average of six per cent, driven in large part by AI-related investment and corporate earnings expectations.

But it identifies AI as the primary risk to that outlook as well. In a downside scenario in which the S&P 500 corrects by 25 per cent - triggered by AI earnings disappointment - approximately USD27 trillion would be wiped from US household wealth, equivalent to nearly 14 per cent of total net worth. The resulting hit to confidence and consumption could push the US economy into recession, with ripple effects across Canadian portfolios given the depth of cross-border market linkages.

The distributional implications of AI are equally significant for advisors working with clients over longer investment horizons. Allianz Research estimates that AI could affect approximately one in four jobs across major economies over the next three years.

Reorganization is expected to dominate, affecting around ten per cent of jobs, while augmentation affects five per cent and displacement affects eight per cent. If productivity gains accrue primarily through corporate profit margins rather than wages, asset owners stand to benefit disproportionately.

"AI could become the next great wealth engine, but the key question is who gets a stake in it," said Katharina Utermöhl, Head of Thematic & Policy Research at Allianz Research, in Munich. "As AI potentially shifts more value creation towards capital, broader participation in capital returns and policies that help workers adjust will be key to making the AI wealth dividend more widely shared."

The debate about AI's role in Canadian wealth management is already well underway among advisors and planning firms. The Allianz report adds a macro-level dimension: technological progress and asset accumulation can occur simultaneously without broadly shared benefit, unless policy responses around retraining, tax design and capital-market access are calibrated to distribute gains more widely.

Inequality: global gains, local stagnation

Despite record headline wealth figures, the distribution of assets has barely shifted. The richest ten per cent worldwide owned 85.4 per cent of global net financial assets in 2025, down from 91.5 per cent in 2005, according to Allianz Research.

At the current pace of improvement, the report calculates it would take nearly eight more decades for global concentration to approach the levels of inequality currently observed within individual countries. Within national borders, the picture is equally stubborn: the top decile held an average of 60.9 per cent of national net financial assets in 2025, almost unchanged from 60.4 per cent in 2005 across 57 countries examined.

The bottom half of the world's population covered by the report - nearly three billion people - collectively holds virtually no net financial assets.

The medium-term outlook for advisors

Looking beyond 2026, Allianz Research projects annual global financial-asset growth of approximately five to six per cent over the medium term.

Structural headwinds such as trade fragmentation, persistent inflation and elevated public debt, will constrain returns, while the scale and timing of AI productivity gains remain uncertain.

In an environment where markets generate the majority of wealth gains and AI is rewriting the rules of corporate earnings and labour income, the gap between those who own assets and those who do not is likely to widen before it narrows.