Feature Articles The HNW Client of 2030 and What It Means for Australian Advisers

The numbers worth knowing

Australian wealth is growing roughly twice as fast as global GDP, and it is increasingly concentrated at the top.

A handful of figures from the report stand out:

• Australia's UHNW population (AUD$42M+ in investable assets) is forecast to grow from 16,460 to 26,095 by 2031, roughly one in every thousand residents.
• The billionaire population is forecast to grow 77% over the same period, the fourth fastest growth rate globally.
• Sydney now ranks fifth in the world for sales of homes above AUD$14 million, ahead of Miami, London and Singapore. Q4 2025 set a record for super-prime transactions.
• Across the globe, 89 people pass the AUD$42 million UHNW threshold every day.

Why this boom is structurally different

Knight Frank's Liam Bailey attributes Australia's outperformance to a "broad-based, resilient economy" with wealth generated across mining, agriculture, finance, business services and a fast-maturing technology sector. Unlike previous Australian wealth cycles, this one is not riding a single commodity wave. It is diversified, durable, and increasingly intergenerational.

Plutonomy, the concept that the ultra-wealthy command a disproportionate share of global capital, remains intact two decades on, but it has evolved. This year's report describes a more complex, more mobile plutonomy: a bigger wealth pool, held by people increasingly  willing to move themselves, their families and their capital across borders to optimise  lifestyle, tax and opportunity.

What mobility actually looks like

The Wealth Report identifies four shifts that advisers serving HNW clients should be tracking:

• The trophy budget is shrinking, but spreading. Clients who once committed AUD$40–70M to a primary residence are now allocating around AUD$21M to "boltholes" in multiple cities.
• Super-prime rentals are surging. Top-end rents have climbed 63% in New York, 53% in London and 48% in Singapore over the past five years, as wealthy clients increasingly favour flexibility over ownership.
• Multi-base families are now standard. Knight Frank's 2026 Family Office Survey found families historically based in London or New York are increasingly opening offices in Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai.
• The members' club is replacing the house. When clients are only in a city for 48 hours, the club becomes their base.

Even predominantly domestic Australian HNW clients now operate within a global frame of reference. For advisers, this shows up in very practical ways. There are more entities to manage, more currencies to track, and more asset types sitting behind a single client relationship. That increases complexity across reporting, tax positioning and portfolio oversight.

Tax and policy are accelerating the trend

Policy is amplifying mobility. From the UK's non-domiciled resident reforms to wealth tax proposals in New York and LA, Italy's flat-tax magnet and Dubai's rise as the corridor for global capital, jurisdictions are competing harder for HNW residents, and losing them faster when settings shift.

Australia's policy settings differ from the UK or US, but the direction of travel is familiar. With Division 296 now law and applying from 1 July 2026, alongside ongoing domestic debate around the taxation of wealth, trusts and investment structures, advisers are operating in an environment where structure and jurisdiction matter more than it has in the past. This puts more pressure on advisers to model outcomes, manage structures and provide clear visibility across the full picture.

What this means for the Australian adviser business model

The HNW Australian client of 2030 will be wealthier, more globally connected and harder to serve. Even where core assets remain largely domestic, portfolios are becoming broader. And their expectations will match that complexity. As one family office in the report puts it, the rising generation wants to see its full position live, daily, and with a currency overlay.

The opportunity in the Australian HNW market is significant, but not simply one of scale. It is about handling complexity well. Advisers who succeed in this segment will not be those who simply win new clients. They will be the ones who can deliver a consolidated, real-time view of increasingly complex wealth structures, across asset classes, entities and jurisdictions.

Traditional platforms were not built for this level of complexity. Accounts that include alternatives, private investments and multiple entities, often across jurisdictions, sit uncomfortably on infrastructure designed for simpler, single entity portfolios.

At the same time, expectations have changed and clients want a clear, consolidated view of their position across all assets. For many advice businesses, this is still difficult to deliver consistently and reflects how most platforms were initially designed. Many are still built around custody and single entity reporting, rather than the flexibility required to support complex structures and non-custodial assets.

This is where the next phase of advice will be defined: not by access to product, but by the ability to orchestrate, report and manage wealth at a level of sophistication clients now expect. The question is no longer whether the wealth will be created, but whether advice businesses are structured to support it.

Want to go deeper? Watch our on-demand webinar featuring Knight Frank's Liam Bailey as he unpacks the global wealth trends reshaping the Australian advice market.