This year, Taiwan’s economy is expected to continue expanding by 4.8%, placing it among the fastest-growing economies in Asia and outpacing Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, says DBS economist Ma Tieying.
This growth momentum has generated spillover benefits. In Wey’s view, Taiwan’s depth in talent and companies across the AI supply chain has created a pool of new wealth that is now looking outwards, including towards Singapore as a base for cross-border investment.
The headline economic numbers have translated into substantial actual wealth. According to Ma of DBS, Taiwan is one of the world’s wealthiest economies, having accumulated substantial wealth over decades of tech-sector expansion, persistent trade surpluses, and rapid development of its financial and property markets.
Total financial assets reached TWD360 trillion ($14.68 trillion) at the end of 2023, while net financial assets (financial assets minus liabilities) stood at TWD54.3 trillion. She expects that, with tailwind from the strong domestic equity rally, both figures will have exceeded TWD400 trillion and TWD60 trillion, respectively, in 2025, with households and private enterprises holding roughly half of all financial assets and financial institutions nearly 40%. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the country’s largest company and a key node in the global AI boom story, has gained some 170% over the past year, rising to around US$1.36 trillion.
See also: Is the Chinese stock market an undervalued giant?
Not a zero-sum game
KGI, with its presence across various Asian markets, including Singapore, believes that wealth created in Taiwan has raised competition with other economies. Wey pushes back against the idea that Asia’s wealth hubs are locked in a winner-takes-all contest. “Everybody can grow because the financial sector and the economy are not a zero-sum game,” he says. As global income expands, he argues, multiple centres can attract inflows. For Singapore, familiarity is key, as the city-state is already a known destination for investors seeking rule-of-law certainty, political stability, a high quality of life and deep financial sector capabilities.
That is also where the family office narrative fits. In Wey’s view, Singapore’s appeal lies not only in its wealth but also in its openness. “A wealth hub has to be an open financial market,” he says. He points to the ability to access global opportunities from Singapore, rather than being constrained to domestic markets. “From Singapore, you can invest worldwide,” he says. The appeal is then reinforced by regulation. “Singapore has very clear and tested financial regulations,” Wey says, citing strong enforcement and transparency around governance and investments.
See also: Making the case for Singapore’s SMID sector
Wey does not dismiss other financial centres in the region, but he describes Singapore’s advantage as structural. It has both a domestic base and a role as a platform for international investors. Singapore’s model has been built around attracting a global investor base. This characteristic is difficult to replicate quickly. Although large Asean markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia can deepen their financial sectors, they tend to operate largely domestically.
A post-pandemic rethink
If Taiwan’s tech wealth is a supply-side force, the demand-side shift may be the pandemic, Wey says. He describes Covid-19 as a catalyst that pushed families and decision-makers to reassess priorities, including how and where wealth is held. In that reassessment, one theme keeps recurring. “Diversification is a keyword that comes to mind,” he says, arguing that high-net-worth investors have become more conscious of uncertainty and are increasingly willing to diversify outside their home markets and consider investment vehicles they previously ignored.
That mindset matters in an AI-led market where valuations and narratives can move faster than fundamentals. Wey says investors keep asking whether AI-linked tech names have become too expensive, but he frames the issue as inherently probabilistic. “There are people who believe that for AI, this time is different,” he says, while others assume history, such as the Dotcom Bubble, might repeat itself. His point is not to pick a side, but to avoid being trapped by headlines.
At KGI, he says the job often involves widening the lens beyond the best-known US stocks. “We don’t just look at the big names, such as the Magnificent 7s,” Wey says. He adds that KGI’s Asia footprint and its understanding of the AI supply chain enable it to identify opportunities across Taiwan and the wider region, including Japan and South Korea, as well as parts of Europe in critical niches.
Wey’s emphasis is on participation without chasing what’s fashionable. “I’m always advising clients and also our colleagues not to just look at news headlines and chase hype,” he says. In practice, he argues, that means looking “downstream and upstream” and recognising that AI infrastructure has an ecosystem: data centres, suppliers, construction, cooling, insurance and resilience measures, among other links.
This ecosystem then shapes portfolio construction. Even when valuations appear stretched, Wey says it is difficult to call an inflexion point in real time. “You only know it’s a bubble when it bursts,” he says. For investors with high conviction, he says the discussion becomes one of protection and hedging, rather than binary decisions to be all-in or all-out.
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Regarding macroeconomic risks, Wey argues that geopolitical shocks can move markets, but investors often overestimate their lasting impact relative to earnings growth. In his view, the practical discipline is to stay anchored to medium- to long-term themes rather than be driven by the “24-hour news cycle”.
Higher unpredictability
Wey flags that this approach is increasingly relevant because “unpredictability will be even higher” in the coming decades. He points to the accumulation of “unexpected things” in 2025 as a reminder that investors need to plan for Black Swan events rather than assume stability. He also adds climate-related disruptions to the list of risks investors should take seriously, noting that major environmental events can have economy-wide consequences.
Beyond technology, Wey highlights two long-run themes he believes are underappreciated in Asian portfolios: consumption and healthcare.
Regarding consumption, he argues that Asia remains structurally different from the US, where spending accounts for a larger share of GDP. In much of Asia, he says, households have historically “saved before they consume”, which has kept consumption as a lower share of GDP. If economies such as China materially increase their share of consumption, Wey says, the implications for resilience and economic structure would be profound, and he expects Asian consumption to be a megatrend over the next one or two decades. He also ties this to geopolitics, as trade barriers rise and domestic consumption becomes a more important engine of growth than the export-led model that defined earlier decades.
On healthcare, Wey sees the opportunity as broader than pharmaceuticals. “The world is ageing very fast,” he says, pointing to rapid ageing in Asia as well as in Europe and North America. He links this to technology’s ability to keep older people economically active for longer and he expands healthcare into a broader well-being and longevity ecosystem that spans how communities live, work and organise family life. But he also warns that healthcare investing carries specific risks, including government policy changes, pricing pressures and the inherent uncertainty of drug discovery.
Green energy is another area Wey likes, though he is more cautious in the near-term. “This one is harder for me to opine,” he admits, while arguing that the long-run direction of travel — improving efficiency, reducing pollution and innovating in renewables — remains intact. He also points to a less obvious AI spillover, such as the pressure data centres can put on electricity systems. He notes wholesale electricity prices in the US have “around doubled compared to before the pandemic”, which he links to data centre demand and the competition for limited resources between industry and households.
