What's In A Name

One of the things we are big on here at CoreData-brandmanagement is semantics – the science of saying exactly what we mean, after all clear communication is one of the challenges of working in research.

This is important in the context of high net worth (HNW) individuals because there isn’t a standard definition of what exactly constitutes a financially wealthy person in Australia.

Therefore in the interests of clarity we have devised some definitive descriptions of the nation’s rich.

CoreData-brandmanagement formulated these after combining a variety of information sources – but primarily data derived from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and four years of group research on Australia’s rich.

The definitions aren’t exhaustive, how could they be? And to a large extent they make use of the most basic of behavioral segmentations, but as a catch all they will have to do:

It’s worth noting that this breakdown doesn’t cover behaviour and our research has indicated that behaviour differs across and within these segments.

For example the number of people who have retired with $1 million of investable assets – as opposed, for example, to the number of $1 million-plus 40 year olds who are still earning money display very different behaviour.

As do the number of people who fit the description of core affluent who are fast heading towards their first million.

What is critical to remember in this is that investment behaviour begins to change when an individual acquires more than $750,000 in investable assets – it’s at this stage they tend to start to look for real diversification, wealth preservation and making serious decisions about their money.

More than three quarter’s of HNWs are male and most of them are over 50. And approximately slightly more than half of both male and female HNWs derive their income from owning all of or part of a small business – indeed an Australian HNWI is six times more likely than average to own all of or part of a business.

ABS data shows average incomes in the capital cities in Australia are 16% above those outside the capital cities.