UBS boss says Switzerland is falling behind on structural change

For example, the dynamics in Asia and Scandinavia are significantly greater, Hamers told newspaper BlickExternal link in an interview on Monday. Also in the Netherlands, Hamers’ home country, the public now does everything digitally, from shopping to banking, he said.

“This also has to do with the culture,” he said. “UBS has almost three million clients in Switzerland. We don’t want to force them to do anything they don’t want to do. The step towards digitalisation only works together.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has dispelled many reservations about digitalisation and accelerated it, he added.

Regarding structural change, Hamers said it was not always possible to avoid redundancies, “but at the same time [there are] new jobs and retraining”. The bottom line, for him, is that the number of employees remain roughly the same.

“We need employees who want to be part of the technological change. And we need specialists who are familiar with artificial intelligence and data.”

Hamers, who has been in office since November 2020 and replaced Sergio Ermotti, believes banks are in a much more stable position today following the Archegos debacle, in which UBS took an $861 million (CHF790 million) hit. Archegos, a family office which imploded in March, borrowed tens of billions of dollars from at least nine global banks to speculate on volatile stocks.

Banks today have significantly more capital cushion and liquidity, Hamers said.

“People trust bankers again,” he claimed.