Axel Weber frequently urges his guild to get in shape if they want to capture a share of the promising millennials market. But how astute is the UBS chairman with his own digital habits?
Wealth managers like UBS are rushing to scale up their digital capacities to reach the coveted segment of millennials.
The segment of 20- and 30-somethings have eluded the reach of traditional private banks, in part because they have very different habits than their baby-boomer parents.
Private bankers like Axel Weber, chairman of UBS, make this point repeatedly, saying wealth managers will have to rethink how they provide their white-glove services to a new generation of Internet- and mobile-savvy clientele.
AirBnb or Hotel?
How savvy is the former central banker, who likens the Swiss bank's new branch layout in Switzerland to that of an Apple Store, at using mobile apps himself?
AirBnB? No. Uber? Definitely, Weber, who turned 60 six months ago, said at a conference held in Frankfurt by German publisher «Handelsblatt».
«When I'm on Capitol Hill for meetings until 10 at night and I need to get home, there's no chance of a taxi – you just have to take Uber,» said Weber.
Tinder?
So far, so good. Weber also aced the entertainment test, when asked whether he uses Spotify to listen to music.
«Yes, I do. For example if I hear a song that I don't recognize, I use Spotify to see what it is, take a screenshot, and if I like it I might buy it,» Weber said.
Spotify plays music, while Shazam identifies tunes on any smartphone. But since Shazam's spectrogram technology is now baked into Facebook, Twitter, Pandora and Spotify, Weber can be forgiven this lapse.
What about Tinder? Weber, who is married and has a son and a daughter who belong to the generation of millennials, demurred.
