Technology will make banking more efficient, according to Dirk Klee, the head of operations at UBS Wealth Management. It will also affect the number of staff the bank will employ.
UBS, the biggest wealth manager with 2 trillion Swiss francs in assets under management, is investing several hundred million francs for the development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence this year.
UBS intends to improve interaction between client and bank, the so-called customer experience, Dirk Klee said in an interview with «The National», a newspaper in the United Arab Emirates. Klee is the head of operations and responsible for the digital strategy at UBS Wealth Management. The bank also aims to make its processes more efficient.
«We are still cumbersome in many processes in banking which will be replaced by smart technology and automation,» Klee said.
Automation and Job Losses
UBS is working hard on the development of several robots – who listen to names such as Alexa, Rose or HIRO. HIRO has been designed to help automate processes within the huge IT department of the bank. HIRO is a learning robot.
The investments in new technologies will affect personnel at Zurich-based UBS. Automation leads to job losses, Klee agreed, but he also added that human advice on investments were far off from being replaced by robotic decision-making.
The bank also still is opening new branches in growth markets such as China, and it needed relationship managers to man those offices.
Real-Estate Management
Digitization also affected the bank’s real-estate management because the number of client contacts declined. Nowadays, more and more clients decided to contact their relationship managers via video-conferencing or online.
«It means that we need fewer and fewer physical spaces and we can concentrate things more in hubs,» Klee said.
