The financial assets of private households in Germany also grew in 2022. Due to the development on the stock market, however, the increase is comparatively small. Despite the Ukraine war, DZ Bank is optimistic about the future.
The financial assets of Germans also grew last year – to almost eight trillion euros, according to a study by DZ Bank. However, the increase of almost two percent was significantly lower than in 2021, when assets had increased by eight and a half percent. The bank attributed this to the share price losses after the beginning of the Ukraine war. On the other hand, household savings remained relatively high.
The sums of money set aside were lower than in the Corona years 2020 and 2021, but higher than in 2019. “This was the only way to prevent financial assets from melting,” explained DZ Bank. She estimates the savings rate in 2022 at around eleven percent, which would be slightly higher than in 2019.
However, wealth is very unequally distributed among the population. According to the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the total net worth in Germany was 7.78 trillion euros in 2017. When adults are classified according to the amount of their net wealth, it shows for 2017 that the richest tenth held 56.1 percent of all wealth. The top 1 percent held around 18 percent of all wealth – as much as the poorest 75 percent of the population combined. The bottom half of the population aged 17 and over had a share of just 1.3 percent of total net wealth in 2017.
In the case of equities and funds, households had to cope with considerable losses in the past year, as the study goes on to say. By mid-2022, price losses had even led to a 1.8 percent decline in financial assets to EUR 7.7 trillion; the price slumps caused by the Ukraine war and the energy crisis could only be partially made up for by the end of the year.
DZ Bank is optimistic about the future: “With the economic recovery that is expected to start in the spring and the energy-price-driven inflation subsiding, the prospects for 2023 will brighten again,” it said. “That should have a positive impact on stock markets and support asset growth.”
The propensity to save will not decrease, and the interest rates will continue to rise. “That should allow financial assets to grow noticeably faster again in 2023.”
