Prime Highlights
- Women are taking on bigger leadership roles in families, influencing decisions about wealth, charity, and long-term legacy.
- Their careful, diversified, and sustainability-focused investment approach is shaping modern wealth management.
Key Facts
- Asia-Pacific now has the highest number of self-made female billionaires, driven by rapid economic growth and rising female entrepreneurship.
- Up to 75% of widows switch financial advisers after inheriting wealth, showing a major shift in how women want their wealth managed.
Background
The financial influence of women is transforming the global billionaire landscape, marking a historic shift in wealth distribution and family leadership. According to UBS’s Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025, women remain a minority among the world’s wealthiest, 374 compared with 2,545 men, but their fortunes are rising at more than twice the pace of male billionaires. In 2025, average female billionaire wealth grew 8.4% to $5.2bn, outshining the 3.2% rise recorded by men.
UBS links this momentum to three powerful forces reshaping global wealth: the massive wave of intergenerational inheritance, increasingly global family structures, and a growing desire among affluent parents to see their children, regardless of gender, build independent careers rather than rely solely on generational capital.
Women’s entry into the billionaire class continues to be driven strongly by inheritance. Of the 43 women who joined the ranks in 2025, 27 inherited their wealth while 16 were self-made. But change is gathering pace. Asia-Pacific now has the most self-made female billionaires, thanks to fast economic growth and more women joining growing industries.
Experts say this is changing traditional roles. As women take on larger leadership roles in families, they are influencing decisions on wealth, charity, and legacy. Their investment style, careful, diversified, and sustainability-focused, is also shaping how wealth is managed.
However, the wealth industry still faces a gap. Many firms still create services mainly for men. Studies show that up to 75% of widows change advisers after inheriting wealth, highlighting a big challenge for firms that are not prepared.
Banks like UBS are responding by training advisers, holding events for women, and supporting female entrepreneurs. As younger generations value independence and the freedom to move globally, women are expected to take an even bigger role in managing family wealth.