The UK's millionaire exodus is a communications problem too

The UK is projected to lose 16,500 millionaires and an estimated $91.8bn in private wealth during 2025. For the government, that is largely a policy issue. But for the banks, law firms, schools, charities and luxury brands that serve wealthy clients, it also presents a communications challenge.

Having spent more than 20 years working in crisis communications, I recognise the signs of a slow-burning crisis. Unlike a product recall or executive scandal, this is not an event that dominates headlines for a week before disappearing. It unfolds gradually, quietly, through moving trucks and residence permits and quietly resigned private banking mandates.

And most of the firms losing business to it are handling it as if nothing is happening.

A slow-moving shift

According to Henley & Partners, a series of policy changes has reshaped the UK's position as a destination for internationally mobile wealth. The closure of the Tier 1 Investor Visa, reforms to the non-domicile tax regime and changes to inheritance tax have all contributed to a sharp increase in enquiries about relocating overseas.

The UAE, the United States (especially Florida), Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Portugal, Greece, Malta and Singapore have emerged among the most popular destinations. Henley projects a net outflow of 16,500 millionaires from the UK in 2025 – a record in a decade of tracking the data.

Why this is a PR problem 

Every wealthy individual who relocates had a UK private banker, a UK law firm, a UK tax advisor, a UK family office, a UK concierge, UK-based memberships, UK-based philanthropic commitments, UK schools for their children, UK art dealers, UK interior designers, and a UK media diet. Once they relocate, they take with them all these types of relationships. These organisations are not simply losing customers; they are losing long-established networks built over many years. 

A wealth manager losing 5% of his client book in twelve months is running a crisis. A private school watching its international enrolment collapse is running a crisis. A law firm with 30% of its private client practice based on UK non-dom work is running a crisis. A luxury watch dealer whose top customers all relocated to Dubai is running a crisis.

And yet the crisis communications industry has largely not organised around this. There are crisis comms specialities for data breaches, product recalls, executive misconduct, and activist investor campaigns. There should now be a speciality for wealth migration displacement — and there isn't, formally, yet.

What the playbook should look like 

Most of the 16,500 departed clients could have been retained by their existing providers if their providers had done two things: (a) acquired operational capability in the destination jurisdictions, and (b) communicated that capability to the client before the client consulted their destination peers. Almost no one did either. Clients relocating to Dubai ended up with Dubai providers by default. 

Brand teams that had built ten years of UK press relationships found themselves in 2025 with clients who no longer read UK press. The right move was to begin building press relationships in the destination markets — Gulf News, Khaleej Times, Haute Living, Robb Report, Wall Street Journal — eighteen months ago. The wrong move, made by many, was to keep pushing UK placements to an audience that had moved. 

Executive profiling also needs to evolve. Not because UK commentary is bad, but because the audience that formerly received it now lives elsewhere. The partner at the UK law firm quoted exclusively in the Financial Times needs to be quoted equally in Bloomberg, CNBC, and the UAE business press. 

Perhaps most importantly, organisations should build resilience before circumstances force them to. The most successful firms in this shift — private banks with both London and Dubai operations, law firms with London and Miami, PR firms with London and New York and Dubai — are winning because they communicated jurisdictional neutrality ahead of the crisis. The firms communicating UK loyalty as their value proposition are losing. 

Scenario planning has long been central to crisis communications. Businesses with significant exposure to internationally mobile clients should now be asking what happens if policy changes, economic conditions or geopolitical events accelerate further migration.

A trend beyond the UK and what can be done

The UK is unlikely to be an isolated case. Henley's latest figures suggest France, Spain and Germany could also record net millionaire outflows during 2025. If that proves correct, organisations serving wealthy clients across Europe may soon face many of the same challenges now confronting UK businesses.

Communications teams that begin preparing now will be better placed than those waiting for the market to shift around them. For those comms professionals, the more important question is how organisations adapt when the audiences, stakeholders and communities they depend on become more international.

Clients serving wealthy audiences will pay for research, playbooks, and retention strategies tied to wealth migration. This is not simply an economic story. It is reshaping where organisations build relationships, how they communicate and which audiences they need to reach. 

Those that position themselves and adapt their communications accordingly, perhaps as the specialist on migration-driven client preservation, will be better placed to win over audiences and retain trust, wherever their clients choose to live.   

Ronn Torossian is Founder and Chairman of 5W Public Relations, one of the largest independently owned PR firms in the United States, specialising in crisis communications. 

Further reading

Should you rely on instinct or data in crisis comms?

Book review: AI for Public Relations by Stephen Waddington and Ben Verinder

Seven podcasting trends for public relations practitioners