A new YouGov report examines the financial and lifestyle characteristics of ‘wealthy’ consumers, defined as people who have net investible wealth exceeding £100,000. The report will also examine how the wealthy in the UK see themselves; exploring their investment choices, portfolio management, and their prospects for personal wealth in the future.
The report looks at a range of wealthy investors, from those who have £100k to 249k to invest, to those with more than £1m in net investible wealth. The majority (65%) of respondents describe themselves as “comfortable but not wealthy”, and eight in 10 (79%) describe their wealth as self-made by them, while a third (30%) say it was self-made by their spouse.
Four in 10 (42%) of wealthy investors come from poor or very poor backgrouds, while just over half (55%) come from middle-income backgrounds. The majority (54%) of wealthy investors say the single biggest advantage of being wealthy is having the freedto choose what to do with your life and 20% say the main benefit is being able to give their children and family a secure future.
Two broad strategies
Wealthy investors segment into two broad groups determined from their return and term preferences: those with an income preference, and those with a capital gains preference.
A quarter (26% ) of wealthy investors are income focused, while 39% are Capital Gain focused, while the rest (30%) want a mix of income and capital gains. Only 11% of wealthy investors invest for the short term (less than one year), while 58% judge their investments over the medium term (one to five years), with 29% investing for the long term (five years or more).
Wealthy investors like to keep personal control
The vast majority (85%) of wealthy investors manage some or all of their investments totally themselves. Even wealthy investors using professionals tend to have an active involvement in the monitoring and evaluation of their investment portfolios.
A third (33%) contract out some or all of their investment managed to professional advisors, and this rises to 46% for the wealthiest investors (over £2 million in investible assets) and to 44% for investors with the most diversified portfolios. Only 6% manage some or all their investments via a fund platform, reaching a peak of 10% among investors with the most diversified portfolios. The vast majority (73%) of wealthy investors monitor their investment portfolios once a quarter, with the level of monitoring highest among those engaged in personal investment management (75%) but still relatively high among those using professional management (64%).
