The quiet buyer just got harder to read: on the Julius Baer Wealth Report 2026

Julius Baer's 2026 Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report is, on its surface, a story about prices. The cost of a premium standard of living rose about 10 per cent in US dollar terms over the year, Singapore held its place at the top, Zurich and Monaco rose to meet it, and London slipped to fifth. Read a little closer and it is a story about behaviour, and the behaviour it describes is the reason recognising your best clients has never mattered more.

Currency, not appetite

Much of this year's apparent inflation is a currency effect. Cities anchored to a strong franc or euro climbed the ranking; those tracking the dollar slipped. A Zurich resident barely felt the rise that pushed their city up the table, while a visitor carrying a weaker currency felt all of it. The report's own conclusion is that wealth today is global, and its purchasing power depends as much on where money sits as on what things cost.

For a luxury house, the practical version of that insight is uncomfortable: the price on your shelf increasingly reflects financial conditions somewhere else. Many luxury brands anchor pricing to the euro or the franc and hold it level across markets, exporting currency strength into every till. The client paying it is doing their own arithmetic.

The buyer who shops across borders

And they are acting on it. This is the finding that should reshape how retailers think. At least one in three high-net-worth individuals have already changed the geographic origin of some of their luxury purchases. More than half would now travel internationally to buy, partly to sidestep tariffs, and around a quarter already do. In China, buyers are moving toward domestic labels that feel closer to home.

The affluent consumer, in the report's words, is no longer a passive price-taker. They choose where to live, where to spend, and where to buy the very same handbag. Their loyalty follows recognition and relationship rather than postcode. A client who bought from your London store in spring may buy the identical piece in Singapore in autumn, from whoever remembered them.

A two-speed floor

Nor is the spending even. The report describes a two-speed luxury economy: APAC and the Middle East pulling ahead, Europe contracting hardest, with jewellery and watch spending in Europe down sharply even as gold-driven prices rose, jewellery up more than 16 per cent and watches more than 15. Experiences held up everywhere; goods did not. Health spending rose in every region. The wealthy are still buying, but they are buying deliberately, and differently by region and by mood.

The lesson for a premium retailer, and a European one especially, is that volume will not save the year. Growth has to come from depth: from knowing the clients already in the book well enough to be their choice wherever they happen to be standing.

Which brings it back to the shop floor

Here is the through-line. The report's wealthy individual is mobile, deliberate, currency-aware, and quietly enormous, and almost none of that is legible from a single receipt. The modest first order in your store may belong to a client who spends across three continents and has simply not yet decided you are worth returning to.

Recognising that person is now the edge. It is a specific act: seeing, from what is already in front of you, that this quiet buyer is worth a personal appointment, an early allocation, a note that remembers their last visit. Do that consistently and you become the name they think of in Zurich and in Singapore alike.

That recognition is the whole job Halia was built for: to find the high-net-worth client hiding behind an unremarkable order, grade them honestly, and hand your team the move that keeps them. In a year when the wealthy will happily buy the same thing somewhere else, being the house that knew them is worth more than being the cheapest counter, which, thanks to the currency, you were never going to be anyway.

Figures cited are from the Julius Baer Global Wealth and Lifestyle Report 2026. The reading, and any opinions, are our own.