Published by the Qatar Financial Centre Authority and market insight firm, Campden Wealth, the study, Beyond Convention looks at how wealth holders in the Middle East interact with financial services designed to meet their needs.
The study, which was conducted in the last quarter of 2012 and the first quarter of 2013, is based on quantitative research with 47 ultra-high net worth individuals for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries as well as Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.
The report found that wealthy families in the Middle East have a strong entrepreneurial spirit, want to play an active role in managing their money and have great confidence in the future of the region.
Of the respondents, 60% were members of family businesses, reflecting the fact that family businesses control as much as 75% of private sector economic activity in the GCC.
Some of the key findings from Beyond Convention are as follows:
- More than 60% of respondents pursued wealth creation rather than wealth preservation as an investment goal (typically this would mean that few would be content with less than eight per cent growth on their investments)
- Respondents expected to earn high returns on relatively low-risk investments but among the asset classes that the respondents expressed a preference for, alternative investments such as hedge funds and private equity were popular
- While nearly 40% of respondents said that they had an excellent relationship with their private banker 80 per cent of them felt that bankers did not take responsibility for the consequences of their advice and respondents also wanted more transparency about bankers’ fees
- 60% of respondents said that they now scrutinized their relationship with their private banks and wealth managers much more closely than they had done a year before
- 55% of respondents intended to continue to invest their money in the Middle East at the expense of other regions in the world. Financial centres such as Doha were increasingly seen as safe havens to deposit money
- Africa figured prominently among investment destinations outside the Middle East amid a wider – and pronounced – preference for emerging markets over developed ones
