Massive charitable donations by the ultra-rich, such as those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, have recently been in the headlines, and a new study has confirmed that philanthropy should also be at the front of wealth managers' minds if they wish to keep pace with current trends.

For the new white paper on philanthropy released today, Barclays Wealth surveyed 2,000 high net worth individuals around the world and found that close to a quarter (23 per cent) regarded charity as a “top spending priority.” Breaking this down regionally the US, Ireland, South Africa and India topped the rankings of countries that donate significant amounts of money and time to charitable causes.

The report, Global Giving:  The Culture of Philanthropy, also found that the high net worth broadly fell into two categories – volunteers and benefactors – according to whether they are more inclined to donate their time or their money to charity.

Here, clear regional trends were also in evidence. The countries where the highest proportion of HNW individuals who said that charity was one of their top three spending priorities, the US, South Africa and Saudi Arabia topped the table at 41, 37, 32 per cent respectively. In fourth and fifth place were Ireland and Taiwan at 30 and 28 per cent.

The picture was rather different in respect of those HNW individuals who preferred to donate their time (volunteers), with India and Ireland sharing the top spot at 20 per cent, followed by the US (17 per cent), South Africa (13 per cent) and Qatar (11 per cent).

As Barclays Wealth puts it “concept of philanthropy is universal”, but the firm was particularly interested in examining how this desire to do good manifests in each individual country. In trying to explain, for example, why Ireland topped both the benefactor and volunteer rankings the report cited the strong sense of community in Ireland and that personal connections to local causes are the driver behind a lot of charitable activity there. In the case of India, Barclays Wealth pointed to the omnipresence of abject poverty in the country contributing to individuals’ sense that they must do something personally to alleviate it.

Understanding the cultural nuances associated with charitable giving is of course vital for wealth management firms as philanthropic services are now increasingly part of the standard offering HNW clients have come to expect. Firms may well find that the key to building a successful philanthropy offering could be tailoring their services to take account of the kind of cultural nuances that Barclays Wealth’s report found.