High Net Worth: Here are the definitions of HNW, UHNW, UHNWF, UHNWI from an expert
Definitions for UHNW for this industry
Perhaps you are a personal assistant that just got hired on to work for a wealthy family and you're new to the vernacular of this business. If so, here are some terms you should be familiar with:
High Net Worth (HNW) Generally Defined: This means that a person is worth at least $1,000,000 net (cash).
Ultra-high Net Worth (UHNW): This definition is a little ambiguous, but usually means that someone has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars.
UHNWI is an ultra-high net worth individual (meaning that they are wealthy and unmarried).
UHNWF is ultra-high net worth family.
When to use the hyphens
Should it be "high net worth family" or "high-net-worth family"? The short answer is that it depends on the context. Here is a quick grammar rule. Adjectives modify nouns. Compound adjectives are ones that have more than one word. If someone says "I work for a high-net-worth family," then the word "family" is our noun and the words "high net worth" become a compound adjective and need hyphens. Just for clarity, here is an example with each used:
1. I am going to apply for a job working for a high-net-worth family.
2. One day I hope to have a high net worth.
You may have noticed that I wasn't using the hyphens for all of the words in the phrase "ultra-high net worth family". There are two reasons for this:
1. Firstly, it looks a little strange to have such a long compound adjective: ultra-high-net-worth family.
2. There is a semantic and grammatical debate as to whether or not the "ultra-high" becomes the adjective and the rest
is a noun. I looked into this a bit and other wealth advisors on their websites do NOT use all of the hyphens, so I'm
not going to either.
In closing, I want to say that people who are billionaires (and people who work for billionaires) often don't use the word "billionaire." For the most part, I have seen financial advisors and people in Family Offices use the abbreviations that we outlined here.
High Net Worth (HNW) Generally Defined: This means that a person is worth at least $1,000,000 net (cash).
Ultra-high Net Worth (UHNW): This definition is a little ambiguous, but usually means that someone has a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars.
UHNWI is an ultra-high net worth individual (meaning that they are wealthy and unmarried).
UHNWF is ultra-high net worth family.
When to use the hyphens
Should it be "high net worth family" or "high-net-worth family"? The short answer is that it depends on the context. Here is a quick grammar rule. Adjectives modify nouns. Compound adjectives are ones that have more than one word. If someone says "I work for a high-net-worth family," then the word "family" is our noun and the words "high net worth" become a compound adjective and need hyphens. Just for clarity, here is an example with each used:
1. I am going to apply for a job working for a high-net-worth family.
2. One day I hope to have a high net worth.
You may have noticed that I wasn't using the hyphens for all of the words in the phrase "ultra-high net worth family". There are two reasons for this:
1. Firstly, it looks a little strange to have such a long compound adjective: ultra-high-net-worth family.
2. There is a semantic and grammatical debate as to whether or not the "ultra-high" becomes the adjective and the rest
is a noun. I looked into this a bit and other wealth advisors on their websites do NOT use all of the hyphens, so I'm
not going to either.
In closing, I want to say that people who are billionaires (and people who work for billionaires) often don't use the word "billionaire." For the most part, I have seen financial advisors and people in Family Offices use the abbreviations that we outlined here.