The arrival of the new CEO Ralph Hamers is rattling nerves at UBS. The Dutch banker will be able to count on a key ally in Switzerland: Martha Boeckenfeld.

At Credit Suisse, Martha Boeckenfeld counts Chairman Urs Rohner among her admirers: very few bankers are as effective under pressure as the 55-year-old top executive, he once noted after the two solved a billion-dollar conundrum for Switzerland's second-largest bank. 

Now at UBS, the German native has taken to her newly-created role running that bank's digital platforms and marketplaces domestically with vigor. The Swiss bank wants to emulate Internet giants like Google and Amazon – Boeckenfeld's job is to get Swiss bankers to get behind the platform concept that is upending financial services.

Hamers' Priorities

Her role is a microcosm of what awaits Ralph Hamers when he begins at UBS on Tuesday before taking over from CEO Sergio Ermotti in November. The Swiss bank needs Hamers to give its digitization efforts a shot in the arm – and he is widely expected to try to break up UBS' hidebound culture and complicated hierarchy.

«Money Martha», as Boeckenfeld is known in financial circles, has a cultural headstart on the Dutch-born Hamers: she left home (North Rhine-Westphalia) early on. After earning her PhD in law in Lausanne, she headed for Hong Kong, where she took a job as a legal adviser to Winterthur. The Swiss insurer had recently been bought by Credit Suisse.

Lengthy Legal Battle

Boeckenfeld worked her way up at, advancing to finance chief in Asia. She returned to Switzerland in 2002, making a name for herself as reliable trouble-shooter: then just 40, Boeckenfeld effectively saved Winterthur roughly $900 million as head of non-life reinsurance. 

The Swiss-based insurer had been locked in a prolonged legal battle over the sale of its international arm to XL Capital for 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion) in 2001. The two squabbled for years about retained liabilities, delaying the sale of the unit and weighing on Credit Suisse's share price.

Steely Negotiator

Boeckenfeld, together with Rohner, Credit Suisse's chief lawyer at the time, extracted a payment of «just» $550 million, far less than the $1.45 billion XL had demanded. The process cemented Boeckenfeld's reputation as a steely company lawyer and financial specialist.

Thanks to her time in Asia, she was also practiced in communicating across different cultures and mentalities, proved herself a key motivator, and never lost sight of the end goal. In 2006, Boeckenfeld was appointed to Winterthur's top management.

Taste of Digitization

Just one year later, she followed Winterthur CEO Leonhard «Lenny» Fischer to investment vehicle RHJI as well as later to banking group BHF Kleinwort Benson, where she oversaw finance for nine years. From 2014, she added the CEO job as well. The bank gave Boeckefeld her first taste of digital transformation.

Fischer, famously driven, once described Boeckenfeld as highly disciplined, and someone who expected the same discipline of others. In 2016, she quietly exited operational roles in finance in favor of board jobs, including at insurer Generali as well as Italian bank Unicredit.

Brisk Pace

She surfaced last year in a surprising and courageous hire for UBS. Through a UBS spokesman, Boeckenfeld declined to speak to finews.com. The new job gave Boeckenfeld entree into the C-suite of its domestic activities, led by Axel Lehmann. 

There, she displayed a brisk pace – launching Key4, a mortgage platform, after just eight months in the job – as well as an irreverent disregard for UBS' stiff hierarchy. Both tip her a likley ally to Hamers, an outsider to Switzerland as well as to wealth management.