Vietnam is the third fastest growing country in terms of ultra high net worth, a new report says.

The World Ultra Wealth Report 2018, released Wednesday, has ranked Vietnam third with a compound annual growth rate of 12.7 percent among the ultra high net worth (UHNW) population, behind Bangladesh with 17.3 percent and China with 13.4 percent.

Compiled by Wealth-X, a leading global wealth information and insight business, the report defines UHNW population as people with $30 million or more in net worth.

Vietnam, Bangladesh and India, are expanding at a faster pace and experiencing rapid urbanization, infrastructure investment and manufacturing growth, it added.

“There were substantial increases in net worth in South Korea, Vietnam, and Indonesia, highlighting the broad improvement across Asia,” it said.

Wealth creation last year was most prevalent in Asia, with a UHNW population of almost 69,000, up 18.5 percent year-on-year, accounting for 27 percent of the world’s ultra wealthy population, the report said.

The total net worth of these people reached nearly $8.37 trillion last year, a growth rate of 26.7 percent from 2016, it added.

To be sure, the U.S. remains the world’s leading location for theusg, staking claim to 35 percent of the world’s ultra wealthy population, whose combined wealth totals $10.998 trillion. However, Asia is quickly closing in. In the past decade, Asia’s proportion of global wealthy rose from 18 percent to 27 percent, positioning it just behind the world’s second wealthiest region, Europe (28 percent).

In the coming years, that gap is set to shrink further, according to the report. It predicts that Asia-Pacific’s ultra wealthy population will increase at a compound rate of 8.3 percent over the next five years, while overall wealth is on track to grow by a slightly faster 8.6 percent. The U.S., meanwhile, is expected to post below-average gains.

That will bring Asia closer to parity with the world’s leading wealth regions, Vincent White, managing director of the Wealth-X Institute told CNBC Make It.

“Asia recorded the highest growth in UHNW (ultra high net worth) population accompanied by a disproportionate rise in combined wealth of over one quarter,” said White. “In the forecast through to 2022 we expect to see a continuation of this growth, closing the gap with the Americas and EMEA.”

Wealth accumulation is not limited to the “crazy rich,” however. Over the coming years, as many Asian countries continue to grow at a faster pace than more developed economies, wealth growth is expected to speed up across all regional demographics, particularly the middle class.

Currently, Asia’s middle class totals around 525 million people, or 28 percent of the world’s middle class population, according to DBS bank’s “Imagining Asia 2020″ report. Over the next decade that group is forecast to expand by more than three times to 1.74 billion. “That would make up about half of the world’s middle class population by 2020,” the report notes.

Source: VN Express , CNBC