Indian household financial assets grew 9 per cent in 2025. Household borrowings grew 14.3 per cent.
The 17th edition of the Allianz Global Wealth Report, published this week, put numbers on what Indian households own and owe at the end of 2025. The two headline figures sit awkwardly beside each other. Gross financial assets rose 9 per cent to $5.3 trillion. Liabilities rose 14.3 per cent to $1.59 trillion.
The gap between those two numbers is the story. Net financial wealth is not what a household holds. It is what it holds after what it owes is taken out. On Allianz's arithmetic, Indian net financial assets grew 6.8 per cent in 2025, well below the 9 per cent growth in gross assets. Families kept saving and investing, but a larger slice of the gain was absorbed by borrowing.
Financial assets, in this report, are the things a household can liquidate: bank deposits, shares, bonds, mutual funds, and insurance and pension balances. Liabilities are what it has borrowed: home loans, vehicle loans, personal loans, credit card dues. The study tracks that balance sheet across almost 60 countries, so the same accounting is applied to a German saver and an Indian one.
The Indian pattern in 2025 was the mirror image of the global one. Worldwide, financial assets grew 8.6 per cent to a record EUR268.4 trillion, while liabilities rose just 3.4 per cent to EUR56.9 trillion. That pushed global net financial assets up 10.1 per cent to EUR211.5 trillion. India, in short, was a place where debt grew faster than savings.
What made the global year remarkable was not saving at all. Markets accounted for roughly four out of every five euros of additional household wealth, and fresh savings actually fell 5.4 per cent to EUR4.1 trillion. Securities, which bundle shares, bonds and investment funds, rose 12.4 per cent globally, more than twice the 5.7 per cent growth in bank deposits and the 5 per cent growth in insurance and pension assets.
That is precisely where Indian households were least exposed. Indian household financial assets are still led by deposits, which make up 40.2 per cent of the portfolio. Securities account for 32.7 per cent, and life insurance and pension assets another 26.7 per cent. Within the year, insurance and pension balances grew fastest at 11.4 per cent, then deposits at 9.8 per cent, while securities grew just 6.1 per cent.
Globally, securities reached a record 46.9 per cent of household financial assets. In India the share is 32.7 per cent, and it grew at roughly half the global pace. A portfolio weighted towards deposits simply does not collect much of a market boom, even a large one. Allianz notes that markets, not savings, drove most of the wealth increase in 2025, which makes the mix of assets the deciding variable.
Over a longer window, Indian households still did well in real terms. After adjusting for inflation, Indian household financial assets were 57 per cent higher in 2025 than in 2019. The same measure was 39.6 per cent for the Asian economies in the report excluding Japan and China, and 22.9 per cent globally. India's 9 per cent nominal growth in 2025 became 6.7 per cent once inflation was taken into account.
The distribution inside that growth is lopsided. The richest 10 per cent of Indian households held 65 per cent of the country's net financial assets in 2025. Net financial assets per capita stood at $2,539, up 6.8 per cent from a year earlier, and India ranked 49th in Allianz's table of countries by net financial assets per capita, unchanged from the year before.
Put the pieces together and the household arithmetic is simple. If the assets a family holds grow 9 per cent and what it owes grows 14.3 per cent, then the figure that matters most, net worth, grows at neither rate. It grew 6.8 per cent. A household carrying an equated monthly instalment on a personal loan and keeping most of its savings in a fixed deposit is on the wrong side of the borrowing trend and the market trend at the same time.
Allianz's India country head, Ritu Arora, said the 2025 figures show that asset accumulation alone is not a complete measure of household financial progress, and pointed to diversification, risk protection and long-term wealth creation. The report expects financial assets to grow around 9 per cent again in 2026, though it warns that future gains depend increasingly on market performance and the uncertain impact of artificial intelligence. Over the medium term, it sees growth settling at around 5 to 6 per cent a year.
Two caveats sit on the numbers. This is a ledger of financial assets: it leaves out real estate and gold, which for most Indian families are the largest stores of wealth, and it is expressed in dollars, so currency moves sit inside the totals. It also measures the size of what households owe, not the purpose of the borrowing.
That last point is the honest edge of the record. The report can show that Indian household liabilities grew 14.3 per cent while financial assets grew 9 per cent, and it can show that the richest 10 per cent hold 65 per cent of net financial assets. It does not say from these figures whether the new borrowing went into homes, into vehicles or into everyday consumption, and it does not claim to. What it establishes is narrower and still worth knowing: in 2025 Indian households added wealth, added debt faster, and ended the year with a net gain smaller than either headline figure suggests.
Sources and method
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