Luxembourg retained its number four spot in a Swiss bank’s annual wealth report. Adults in the Grand Duchy had an average personal wealth of US$315,000, according to the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s “Global Wealth Report 2013”, issued Wednesday.

The Grand Duchy ranked behind Switzerland ($513,000 in average wealth per adult), Australia ($403,000) and Norway ($403,000). Those countries held the exact same slots last year, the report authors noted.

The 2013 global top ten were rounded out by the US, Sweden, France, Singapore, Belgium and Denmark “with average wealth per adult in the $250,000 to $300,000 range”.

The Credit Suisse study (PDF) said: “Interestingly, the ranking by median wealth per adult is slightly different, favoring countries with lower levels of wealth inequality. Australia ($220,000) tops the list again this year, with only Luxembourg ($183,000) in close contention.”

The researchers wrote that median wealth in Belgium, France, Italy, the UK and Japan “lies in the $110,000 to $150,000 range”, while “Switzerland, Finland and Norway have slightly lower values of around $95,000, but the United States is much further back with median wealth of just $45,000.”

Highest in euro area

Luxembourg topped the list of euro zone countries, where “wealth per adult was $154,900 in mid-2013,” Credit Suisse said.

Austria, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands had individual wealth levels around the euro area average, “but wealth is about 20% higher in Italy and Belgium, and about 50% higher in France and Luxembourg.”

Spain and Cyprus residents had about 60% of the euro zone average, those in Greece had around half, and Estonians and Slovakians had “less than 20%”, said the report.

The Credit Suisse researchers noted differences in the bank’s wealth estimates and those produced by the European Central Bank. The ECB has said adults in Cyprus and Malta are three times wealthier, and has a figure 50% higher for Luxembourg inhabitants.

On the other hand, Credit Suisse estimates are “about 20% higher for Finland, Germany and Greece, about 35% higher for Italy and the Netherlands, and 50% above the ECB level for France.”

Many economists and political leaders note that the large number of cross-border commuters frequently skews economic figures for the Grand Duchy.

Potential private banking clients

Credit Suisse estimated that worldwide there are 31.4 million “high net worth” adults, with between $1 million and $50 million in wealth, which is the segment that Luxembourg private banks typically seek out. The Swiss bank said the majority of those clients, nearly 90%, had wealth “in the $1 million to $5 million range”.

Overall, North America is home to 45% of the worldwide total of high net worth individuals, followed by Europe (32%), Asia-Pacific excluding China and India (17%), and China now has more than one million, or 3.6% of the global total.

Wealth is still concentrated at the top, according to the study. “Our estimates suggest that the lower half of the global population possesses barely 1% of global wealth, while the richest 10% of adults own 86% of all wealth, and the top 1% account for 46% of the total,” Credit Swiss wrote.

Yet the world continues to grow richer. “We expect global wealth to rise by nearly 40% over the next five years, reaching $334 trillion by 2018.”

The bank said wealth was calculated by taking the financial and real assets minus debts. Personal pension fund assets were included, “but not entitlements to state pensions”.