Meaning & use
high-net-worth individual
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountablefinance
A person whose savings and investments are worth a very large amount, usually at least about a million dollars, not counting their main home.
Grammar: Has a regular plural: several high-net-worth individuals.
Patterns
- a high-net-worth individual with something
The private bank only takes on high-net-worth individuals with at least two million dollars to invest.
Luxury yacht brokers target high-net-worth individuals at boat shows.
Tax rules for high-net-worth individuals changed again this year.
Word forms
| plural | high-net-worth individuals |
|---|
Common combinations
- wealthy high-net-worth individual
- Each wealthy high-net-worth individual was offered a personal adviser.
- serve high-net-worth individuals
- Her firm serves high-net-worth individuals across Europe.
- ultra-high-net-worth individual
- An ultra-high-net-worth individual may own more than thirty million dollars.
- cater to high-net-worth individuals
- The hotel caters to high-net-worth individuals who value privacy.
- high-net-worth individual's portfolio
- A high-net-worth individual's portfolio often includes art and property.
Synonyms and how they differ
- millionaire
- Millionaire is a plain everyday word for someone with at least a million, while high-net-worth individual is a professional category used by banks.
- affluent person
- Affluent person is a loose descriptive phrase with no fixed amount, unlike the financial threshold behind high-net-worth individual.
- rich person
- Rich person is informal and general; it carries no hint of the wealth-management setting that high-net-worth individual signals.
- HNWI
- HNWI is simply the abbreviation and appears in reports and spreadsheets rather than in speech.
Word family
- net worth noun
- total value of what someone owns minus what they owe
- wealth noun
- a large amount of money or property
- wealthy adjective
- having a lot of money
- individual noun
- a single person
Commonly confused: high-net-worth individual or high-income earner?
high-net-worth individual vs high-income earner
A high-income earner has a large salary, but a high-net-worth individual is defined by total assets, so a retired investor with little income could still qualify.
Practice
A bank classes clients by their total investable assets. Which client would it most likely call a high-net-worth individual?
Choose one answer.
The term is based on total assets, so the investor fits. A large salary alone does not qualify, which is why the first option is tempting but wrong.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “high-net-worth individual”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.