NEW DELHI: India has seen the second-biggest outflow of high net worth individuals (HNWI) in last 14 years, with as many as 61,000 millionaires shifting base to abroad due to reasons like tax, security and child education, says a report.
A joint report by New World Wealth and LIO Global said the change in domicile, along with a rise in second citizenship applications, has increased dramatically since the turn of the century.
Some 61,000 uber-rich Indians have changed domicile between 2000 to 2014 — second only to China which saw an outflow of 91,000 ultra-rich persons in the same period, the report said.
“Indian HNWIs tend to move to the UAE, the UK, the US and Australia,” the report said, adding that Chinese HNWIs mainly moved to the US, Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK.
Overall, the UK has seen the biggest inflow of HNWIs from abroad and the figure stood at 1.25 lakh over the past 14 years.
Other countries that saw significant HNWI outflows include France (42,000), Italy (23,000), Russia (20,000), Indonesia (12,000), South Africa (8,000) and Egypt (7,000).
The factors of the outflow, according to the report, include turmoil in home country, security concerns and optimising education of children.
Most of the HNWIs who moved into the UK came from Europe, Russia, China and India. There were also substantial numbers that came from the Middle-East and Africa, the report added.
In terms of inflows of HNWIs, the UK was followed by the US and Singapore.
Inflows into the US predominantly came from China while the UK, India and Russia made up for a sizeable chunk. Most migration to Singapore came from China, India and Indonesia.
This survey was conducted comparing the domicile of a sample of around 60,000 global HNWIs in 2000 with the same in 2014.
HNWIs refer to individuals with net assets of USD 1 million or more excluding their primary residences.
PTI