The market for personal financial services (PFS), like many other markets before it, is globalizing. Companies from developed regions are looking for opportunities to expand overseas, particularly in emerging economies. But to date there has been insufficient information for them to assess either the size or the attractiveness of new markets. Recent research, based on publicly available data and interviews with local market experts, has tried to fill the gap.

Market size

The global market for PFS is huge and growing fast. We estimate it is currently worth $380 billion in terms of profit opportunities, $125 billion of which is accounted for by the United States. Other OECD markets are worth a total of $181 billion, and emerging economies $74 billion (Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2).

The United States will remain by far the world’s largest PFS market for the foreseeable future, yet emerging economies’ share of the global pie will undoubtedly increase. On the

basis of forecasts of gross domestic product growth, profit opportunities in countries such as China and Brazil could exceed those in many OECD countries by 2002 (Exhibit 3). But even these projections probably understate the future size of emerging PFS business, as the pace...