The number of billionaires will increase by about 40% by 2026

The five-year prediction is for wealth to continue expanding, said Nannette Hechler-Fayd'herbe, Chief Investment Officer for EMEA and Global Head of Economics & Research at Credit Suisse.

Credit Suisse says that by 2026, there will be nearly 40% more millionaires in the world.

Nannette Hechler-Fayd'herbe, Chief Investment Officer for the EMEA region and Global Head of Economics and Research at Credit Suisse, said that over the next five years, "wealth will continue to grow."

Higher inflation "leads to higher forecast values for global wealth when expressed in current U.S. dollars instead of real U.S. dollars. In the next five years, more than 87 million people will become millionaires, Hechler-Fayd'herbe said in a statement. "By 2024, the average wealth of an adult around the world should be more than $100,000," she said.

Global wealth went up last year thanks to rising stock prices and low interest rates. At current exchange rates, global wealth went up 9.8%, to $463.6 trillion, according to Credit Suisse's "Global Wealth Report 2022." It said that the wealth of each adult rose by 8.4% to $87,499.

The report said that all regions contributed to the rise in global wealth, but North America and China were the biggest contributors, with North America making up more than half of the total and China adding another quarter. It said that North America and China had the highest growth rates, each by about 15%.

The report said that the United States still had the most ultra-high net-worth people with a wealth of over $50 million, with more than 140,000. China came in second, with 32,710 ultra-high-net-worth people. Credit Suisse thinks that there will be 62.5 million millionaires in the world by the end of 2021. This is 5.2 million more millionaires than there were the year before.

On the other hand, this year looks hard. "As many countries face slower growth or even recession in 2022 and 2023, it is likely that some of the huge gains in wealth in 2021 will be lost," the report said.

The Global Wealth Report said that rising interest rates in 2022 have already hurt the prices of bonds and stocks and are likely to hurt investments in things other than money.

Credit Suisse predicted that growth would pick up again in the long run. "By 2026, the world's nominal wealth is expected to grow by $169 trillion, or 36% more than it did last year," it said.

The report said that the people who will benefit will be more spread out around the world. "Low- and middle-income countries make up 24% of the world's wealth right now, but over the next five years, they will be responsible for 42% of the growth in wealth. Credit Suisse said that middle-income countries will be the main source of change in the world.