More than 25 years ago, Brand Finance was established with a mission to bridge the gap between marketing and finance and to provide insights and the vocabulary with which these two departments can interact.

At that time, global intangible assets were worth an estimated US$8 trillion. The past two decades have seen accelerated growth in the importance and therefore value of intangible assets. Innovation has contributed to the growth in value of software, marketing – which can now be tailored to individuals automatically and instantly, and customers- who are increasingly connected with tech organisations due to products such as FinTech and HealthTech.

However, global intangible value has followed the trend seen in previous financial crises, and has now declined 25% year-on-year, from US$76 trillion in 2021 to US$57 trillion in 2022.

This is considerably lower than the levels of intangible value seen even during the pandemic, where even amongst the uncertainty, total intangibles continued to grow, as the value grew at a 2-year CAGR of 12%, between 2019 and 2021, driven in large part by key technology brands in the study.