The Land Over The Rainbow
Australia’s popularity amongst the world’s wealthy is attributed to several key factors that include:
- Strong business ties to Asia
- Absence of inheritance taxes
- The 9th largest wealth market in the world in terms of total wealth
- Strong economy that experienced growth over the last decade
- Stable political environment and low crime rates
- English-speaking country with a world-class education system
- First class healthcare and welfare systems
- Clean environment
It is also worth noting that most wealthy individuals who get residency in Australia do actually move to the Land of OZ permanently. However, this does not appear to be the case with other countries where millionaires get their second residency.
Other Countries
Other countries that experienced inflows of high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) in 2018 are shown in the table below.
Countries ranked by HNWI Inflow
- Australia
- United States
- Canada
- Switzerland
- United Arab Emirates
- Caribbean
- New Zealand
- Singapore
- Israel
- Portugal
- Greece
- Spain
- 12,000
- 10,000
- 4,000
- 3,000
- 2,000
- 2,000
- 1,000
- 1,000
- 1,000
- 1,000
- 1,000
- 1,000
Migration Pathways
Business Innovation and Investment Programme (BIIP) is becoming popular especially with wealthy people from Middle East and Asia. But other options such as work transfers or partner visas are also contributing to the inflow of HNWI to Australia.
The number of allocated places for the BIIP program remained the same over the last few years at 7260 places, however, the number of applications varied mainly due to changing regulations. The Business Innovation Stream and the Significant Investor Stream remain the most popular streams of the program, while China remains the dominant source country for BIIP applicants.