The AIA Survey on Middle Class Hopes and Aspirations is a proprietary survey commissioned by AIA Group, providing an in-depth look at the fast-rising middle class segment in Asia across four key areas: quality of life, financial security, retirement, and family and education.

This is the third year that AIA has carried out this measurement of middle class hopes and aspirations. In 2015, the survey interviewed 2,500 self-identified middle class individuals from four North Asia markets, namely Mainland China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, through online and face-to-face interviews. Interviews were conducted over four weeks (18 February to 18 March 2015) with 500 individuals each in Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, and 1,000 individuals in Mainland China, who self-selected themselves as middle class. Online interviews were conducted with respondents aged 25 to 49, and face-to-face interviews with individuals aged 50 or older. The first survey undertaken in 2013 focused on the middle class in the Greater China markets of Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The second survey conducted in 2014 focused on six ASEAN markets, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Please visit asiamiddleclass.aia.com for more details.

The AIA Middle Class Index is a summary score for whether respondents think ten aspects of their lives will improve, stay the same, or worsen over the next 12 months at the time when they were surveyed. An index above 50 indicates respondents expect life to improve and an index below 50 indicates they expect their life to worsen.

The ten aspects of life include: the amount of money available to spend, the value of savings, family life, the amount of time for leisure, romantic life, home and the quality of where respondent lives, the environment where respondent lives, health and well being, career/business, and the value of respondent’s property.

The index is calculated based on the formula of Index = (P1 *1) + (P2 *0.5) + (P3 *0), where P1 is the percentage of respondents who believe their situation will improve, P2 is the percentage of those who say it will stay the same, and P3 is the percentage of those who think it will worsen.

AIA Group Limited and its subsidiaries (collectively “AIA” or the “Group”) comprise the largest independent publicly listed pan-Asian life insurance group. It has a presence in 18 markets in Asia-Pacific – wholly-owned branches and subsidiaries in Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, New Zealand, Macau, Brunei, a 97 per cent subsidiary in Sri Lanka, a 26 per cent joint venture in India and representative offices in Myanmar and Cambodia.

The business that is now AIA was first established in Shanghai over 90 years ago. It is a market leader in the Asia-Pacific region (ex-Japan) based on life insurance premiums and holds leading positions across the majority of its markets. It had total assets of US$167 billion as of 30 November 2014.

AIA meets the long-term savings and protection needs of individuals by offering a range of products and services including life insurance, accident and health insurance and savings plans. The Group also provides employee benefits, credit life and pension services to corporate clients. Through an extensive network of agents, partners and employees across Asia-Pacific, AIA serves the holders of more than 28 million individual policies and over 16 million participating members of group insurance schemes.

AIA Group Limited is listed on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited under the stock code “1299” with American Depositary Receipts (Level 1) traded on the over-the-counter market (ticker symbol: “AAGIY”).