Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong clients want similar products. Hong Kong is offshore for one market and home for the other.

Among affluent and high net worth respondents in mainland China, 31% hold an offshore account in Hong Kong. Adviser use and private-market interest are much closer across mainland China and Hong Kong, so the stronger dividing line is whether the account is held at home or abroad.

On a planning chart, mainland China and Hong Kong may sit beneath one Greater China heading, but when a market head opens the client book, Hong Kong can be home for one client and offshore for another.

Among affluent and high net worth respondents in mainland China, 31% hold an offshore account in Hong Kong. The United States follows at 26%, and Singapore at 16%.

For Hong Kong respondents, Hong Kong cannot appear as an offshore location at all.

Within a regional coverage plan, Hong Kong therefore occupies two roles: it is the home market for one book and an offshore center for another.

Two accounts in that client book may be marked Hong Kong: one belongs to a mainland China client and is held offshore; the other belongs to a Hong Kong client and is held at home. The same place name creates two different coverage questions.

That distinction would be straightforward if respondents also differed sharply in how they use advisers or what they expect to buy. They do not.

Similar demand profiles sit over different account roles. For a Greater China team, the more useful split is between accounts held at home and accounts held abroad.

The adviser model does not create the split

The location of the wealth manager looks like the obvious explanation, but the two markets are close there too.

Among mainland China respondents who use an adviser, 50% use an offshore adviser only or combine onshore and offshore advisers. The equivalent figure among advised Hong Kong respondents is 55%. At these bases, the gap is too small to distinguish.

An offshore or mixed advisory arrangement is therefore common in both markets.

The smaller offshore-only group does separate them: among advised respondents, 10% in mainland China use only an offshore adviser, compared with 17% in Hong Kong. That difference is real, but it sits inside the larger shared pattern that roughly half of advised respondents use an offshore or mixed arrangement.

Private-market interest is closer than the account map

Product interest narrows the gap further.

Interest in accessing private credit through a bank is 32% among mainland China respondents and 33% among Hong Kong respondents. The question covered ten private-market options: private credit; private equity; venture capital; infrastructure projects; pre-IPO opportunities; hedge funds; real estate private funds; co-investment alongside private equity deals; fractional or tokenized real assets; and fractional or tokenized bonds or fixed income. Across those options, no gap between the two markets is larger than eight percentage points.

These figures do not make demand identical or establish which products can be offered from each center.

They do show that this question provides no broad product divide strong enough to justify different starting assumptions for the two markets.

Cryptocurrencies add the useful complication. Ownership is higher in Hong Kong: 27% of Hong Kong respondents have invested in cryptocurrencies, compared with 18% of mainland China respondents. Intention points in a different direction. Plans to invest soon are 35% among Hong Kong respondents and 34% among mainland China respondents.

Past ownership and future intention answer different business questions.

The ownership gap indicates where wealth managers are more likely to encounter existing experience; the intention figures describe a similar stated next step. Past adoption should not be used as a proxy for what respondents in the two markets expect to do next.

The destination map changes the operating question

Hong Kong respondents are more likely than mainland China respondents to hold an offshore account in Switzerland: 23% compared with 14%. The mainland China map has a different anchor because Hong Kong itself is available as an offshore destination.

For Hong Kong respondents, the offshore account map points more often to Switzerland.

For mainland China respondents, Hong Kong itself is one of the leading offshore locations. The same cross-border label therefore begins from a different home-and-destination pair.

This is where a regional plan needs to become account-specific. The first two labels should be the home market and the center where the account is held.

Together, they establish whether Hong Kong is acting as home or offshore for that relationship. They also create the right sequence for decisions about relationship ownership, permissions, disclosures and referral. The research does not resolve those mechanics, but it identifies where the plan needs to ask the questions.

Let the account map set the coverage model

The shared demand evidence does not justify two product strategies at the outset.

The account evidence does not support one undifferentiated coverage model. A common private-markets proposition can be tested across both markets, while the coverage plan distinguishes where the relationship sits and which role Hong Kong plays.

Before the next planning cycle draws one line around Greater China, map every book by home market and booking center.

Hong Kong should appear twice: once as the home market being served, and once as the offshore center where mainland China respondents hold accounts. That is the distinction the regional label currently hides.

Source note

WealthLens™ 2026, Agility Research & Strategy. Single wave; fieldwork 29 May to 9 July 2026. Affluent and high net worth respondents in four markets: mainland China n=500, Hong Kong n=300, Singapore n=300 and Australia n=300. This article uses mainland China n=500 and Hong Kong n=300. Adviser-location figures use respondents who use a financial adviser: mainland China n=383 and Hong Kong n=267. The 50% and 55% figures combine respondents using an offshore adviser only with respondents using a mix of onshore and offshore advisers. Offshore account locations allow multiple responses. All percentages are unweighted and rounded to whole numbers. Article body: 793 words, excluding title, stand-first, subheads and source note.