The world's wealthiest countries

The world’s wealthiest countries have been revealed in a new study which measured the average value of savings, pensions and investments held by their populations.

The UK, where according to the research each citizen holds an average of 95,600 euros (£82,780) in financial assets, is in third place behind USA at number two, with 160,949 euros (£139,370) per head.

Switzerland is the world’s wealthiest nation where on average each person is said to have assets worth 170,589 euros (£147,720).

Kathrin Brandmeir, an economic researcher at Allianz, who produced the report, said it was “remarkable” how far some European countries had declined in the rankings in recent years.

“You can see that the Euro crisis has left its mark on the savings of private households, especially in Italy as they had remarkable losses during the financial crisis. They've made up for that now but it took several years, ” Ms Brandmeir told The Independent.

“Incomes haven’t been increasing and [citizens] have to take money from their savings,” she said. “Italy and France have dropped around nine places since the year 2000.”

The figures are worked out by deducting total debts from personal financial assets, which don’t include real estate. This is because it isn’t yet possible to successfully compare the data on property owned by each person, said Ms Brandmeir.

“Some of them include the land price of a property, whereas others just include the real estate. In 2014, we included real estate, and in a global ranking it doesn't change much. There is no reliable data for emerging data like China,” she said.

Even in the world’s richest countries, wealth is not always distributed equally – a factor which is particularly acute in the US, one of the world’s most unequal countries where the poorest residents are unlikely to benefit from the country’s average savings.

And recent analysis by Oxfam suggested that the richest 1 per cent of people in the UK own more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest fifth.

Following the UK in the rankings is Sweden, with average financial assets of 89,942 euros (£77,880) per head, Belgium, with 85,027 euros (£73,630) per person and Japan, with 83,888 euros (£72,640) per head.

But other Asian countries are fast catching up to the island nation, said Ms Brandmeir.

“Japan has been the leader in capital financial assets in the Asian world, and it's still in the lead. But we think in two or three years countries like Taiwan or Singapore could overtake Japan, as the equity markets there are not catching up yet, despite Abenomics.”