The financial assets of private households have reached a record €135.7tn (£100.3tn), enough to settle the planet’s sovereign debt and still have two-thirds of the total left over, according to Allianz’s Global wealth report for 2015.

Debts owed by private households increased by 4.3% on 2013 to total €35.2tn last year, which means that net financial assets (gross assets minus debt) have topped €100tn for the first time.

Gross financial assets are the combined total of bank deposits, securities, insurance and pension funds. For the first time since the financial crisis, western Europe posted a higher increase in financial assets than North America, with growth rates of 6.7% and 4.8% respectively. This is due to a considerable increase in insurance and pension assets in a number of European countries.

Despite this, western Europe still holds only about half the amount of financial assets it did in the pre-crisis years. Conversely, most other developed regions have surpassed the totals they were recording before 2008, which the Allianz report says shows to an extent the lingering effect of the euro crisis on savings.

The gross financial assets of private households increased by 7.1% on 2013, the third consecutive year that growth has exceeded 7%. If you exclude Japan from the Asian data, the region recorded the fastest-growing financial assets in the world in 2014, with an increase of 16.6% compared with the previous year.

Growth was particularly strong in China, which accounts for nearly 11% of the world’s financial assets, overtaking Japan’s share (8.9%) for the first time. However, the increase in financial assets was more subdued in other developing regions – Latin America and eastern Europe posted growth rates of under 8%.

Financial assets remain largely concentrated in the world’s richest regions despite the increasing share taken up by developing countries in recent years.

North America still holds 45% of the world’s financial assets despite being home to only 5% of the world’s population. While western Europe, which is home to 5.8%, retains 24.4% of its globe’s financial assets.

How much is held by each country?

Switzerland remains the country with the highest net financial assets per capita. In 2014, every Swiss resident had an average of €157,446 in financial assets.

The US came in second place with €138,714 per capita, while the UK has leapfrogged seven major economies since last year’s rankings (Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, Canada and Singapore) to take third place with €86,223 per capita.

Kazakhstan has the lowest financial assets per person in the world, among those analysed, with just €406 for every person resident in the central Asian country – just 0.26% of the Swiss total.

Are financial assets held equally?

What Allianz terms the world’s wealth lower class makes up 71% (3.5 billion) of the planet’s population but holds less than 5% of net financial assets. While 80% of the world’s net assets are held by the upper wealth class, which makes up less than 10% (420 million) of the population.

The remaining 17% share of financial assets is taken up by the burgeoning global middle class, which has increased its share by 10% since 2000.

Last year, the number that fell into the middle wealth class surpassed 1 billion for the first time. Since 2000, 600 million people who were previously in the low wealth bracket have moved into the middle wealth bracket.

Most of this growth has come from Asia. The middle class in this region contains 855 million people, nearly 10 times more than at the start of the millennium. Asians make up two-thirds of the wealth middle class, with 85% of them from China.

The categories used by Allianz are defined by taking the average global net financial per capita assets (€20,360), the middle bracket comprises individuals whose assets fall between 30% and 180% of the global average. Those below 30% are in the lower wealth class, and those above 180% in the upper class.