UBS Group AG provides financial advice and solutions.
Strategy
UBS operates as a global wealth manager and the leading bank in Switzerland. These key pillars of the company’s strategy are enhanced by focused and competitive investment bank and asset management capabilities. The acquisition of the Credit Suisse Group has further accelerated the company’s growth strategy by providing its client franchises with additional scale, complementary capabilities and talent in line with its ambition to p...
UBS Group AG provides financial advice and solutions.
Strategy
UBS operates as a global wealth manager and the leading bank in Switzerland. These key pillars of the company’s strategy are enhanced by focused and competitive investment bank and asset management capabilities. The acquisition of the Credit Suisse Group has further accelerated the company’s growth strategy by providing its client franchises with additional scale, complementary capabilities and talent in line with its ambition to position UBS.
The company’s gives its clients access to abroad, relevant and customizable range of solutions, which, together with its thought leadership and capabilities, position it well to become their partner of choice. The company’s strategic ambitions reflect the long-term outlook on demographic and social trends affecting wealth distribution, product demand and client experience.
The company is also delivering on its commitments to its home market, as it continues to provide around CHF 350bn of credit to Swiss companies and the economy. The company strives to serve its clients as one firm, with collaboration across its business divisions being a cornerstone of its strategy. It regularly enhances this integrated approach to support its growth, as demonstrated by recent initiatives, such as the establishing of the division-agnostic Unified Global Alternatives and the creation of Global Wealth Management Solutions.
The company has a proven technology strategy in place to focus on delivery and experience for its clients and employees. It is evolving into an AI-driven institution, using generative AI to drive growth, improve client service, and increase productivity. The company invests in partnerships with leading academic institutions worldwide and other key players to develop ideas, drive outcomes across the firm and foster pioneering AI research. The company is committed to driving innovation and excellence, ensuring that its technology advancements meet the expectations of its clients, employees, and stakeholders.
Divisions
The company operates through five business divisions: Global Wealth Management, Personal & Corporate Banking, Asset Management, the Investment Bank and Non-core and Legacy.
Global Wealth Management
The company is the largest truly global wealth manager and are focused on serving the needs of ultra-high and high net worth individuals through trusted relationships with its advisors. The company’s global reach, its advisory approach led by the Chief Investment Office (the CIO) and access to its comprehensive platform with its broad array of solutions, supported by its premium brand, are key differentiators.
Global Wealth Management is organized into five regional business units covering the US, Switzerland, Asia Pacific, EMEA and Latin America, as well as capability-related and support units.
With the company’s distinctive approach to wealth management, and by offering advice, expertise and solutions, it helps its clients pursue what matters most to them. The company’s alignment of its core offering across UBS and Credit Suisse platforms is near completion, and clients across its entire franchise can benefit from the best UBS has to offer regardless of the platform they are on.
The company’s investment advice to clients is led by its global CIO, which produces the UBS House View, identifying investment opportunities designed to protect and increase its clients’ wealth over the long term.
Through its platforms, it offers to the company’s clients a broad range of securities and investment products. In addition to traditional equity and fixed-income securities, the company’s investment specialists’ source and craft a range of investment products, including separately managed accounts (SMAs), structured products, sustainable- and impact-investing products, and alternative investments. The company’s alternatives offering gives clients access to private markets, hedge funds and real assets. The company offers its own private equity multi-manager investments and enable clients to access selected single-manager funds and open-ended programs.
To complement this offering, the company provides clients with advice on wealth planning, sustainability-focused and impact investing, and corporate and banking services. The company’s specialist teams also advise on art and collecting, family strategy and governance, philanthropy, next generation, and wealth transition.
In addition to the company’s investment management products and solutions, it also offers extensive mortgage, securities-based and structured lending expertise, catering to clients’ sophisticated lending needs.
In 2024, the company combined its private market and hedge fund manager selection franchises from Global Wealth Management and Asset Management to create a new business unit, called Unified Global Alternatives, which sits operationally within the Asset Management business division and additionally reports to Global Wealth Management. The company also formed Unified Global Banking, combining Global Wealth Management’s corporate finance capabilities with Global Banking to service the traditional corporate finance needs of its Global Wealth Management clients and their companies.
The company is investing in its operating platforms and tools to better serve the company’s clients’ needs, improve their experience, enhance overall advisor productivity and improve operational resilience. The company’s platform for discretionary mandates provides significant flexibility and solutions.
In Asia Pacific and Switzerland, the Direct Investment Insights function on the company’s online banking platform enables clients to trade directly based on CIO insights via their smartphones and other digital devices.
For the benefit of the company’s clients and to further empower its advisors, it is also leveraging investments in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. The company is using AI-powered tools to enhance its capabilities and platforms, for example Red, the company’s internal chatbot that builds on generative AI capabilities.
In addition, the company is continuing to broaden its offering across asset classes and themes, collaborating with best-in-class managers across the most relevant strategies.
Competition
The company’s main competitors fall into two categories: competitors with a strong position in the Americas but with more limited global footprints, such as Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America; and competitors with international footprints but with a smaller presence than UBS in the U.S., such as Julius Baer, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bankand HSBC.
Personal & Corporate Banking
As the leading bank in Switzerland, the company’s home market, it provides a comprehensive range of financial products and services to private, corporate and institutional clients. With Personal & Corporate Banking at its core, Switzerland is the only region where the company operates in all its business areas. The company is fully committed to maintaining its leadership in the company’s home market. Swiss clients and the Swiss economy benefit from UBS’s unparallelled global reach and capabilities. The company is a go-to bank for entrepreneurs in Switzerland, providing comprehensive support at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey.
Personal & Corporate Banking is organized into 10 regions, covering distinct Swiss economic areas. The company operates a multi-channel approach, and it is constantly developing its digital and remote channels.
The company provides its personal banking clients with access to a comprehensive, life-cycle-based offering. This includes a broad range of basic banking products, from payments to deposits, cards and convenient online and mobile banking, as well as lending (predominantly mortgages), investments and retirement planning services. Personal & Corporate Banking works closely with Global Wealth Management to provide the company’s clients with access to leading wealth management services.
The company’s corporate and institutional clients benefit from its banking, financing and investment solutions, in particular access to equity and debt capital markets, syndicated and structured credit, private placements, leasing, and traditional financing. The company offers transaction banking solutions for payment and cash management services, trade and export finance, and global custody solutions for institutional clients.
The company works closely with the Investment Bank to offer capital market and foreign exchange products, hedging strategies, and trading capabilities, as well as corporate finance advice. In cooperation with Asset Management, the company also provides fund and portfolio management solutions.
In the company’s corporate business, it takes a holistic approach to client dialogue. The company seeks to provide practical, tailored solutions with a deep understanding of its clients’ business operations and collaborate with partners to offer a comprehensive range of products and services. The company also launched sustainability-linked loans for commodity trade finance and corporate clients.
Through the company’s new partnership with NORM, it offers a digital, user-friendly energy analysis and a specific roadmap for sustainable renovations. Additionally, the company has introduced UBS Loan Green to support sustainability in investment and commercial properties.
Through the company’s collaboration with Fasoon and Startups.ch it actively supports clients in founding their businesses and getting started financially from the very beginning. The company’s UBS Marketplace offers relevant partner solutions to support corporate clients throughout their life cycle.
The company is building stronger relationships with its mortgage clients throughout the entire property ownership lifecycle with comprehensive services, including property acquisition, renovation, maintenance, and sale. The company's exclusive partnership with SMG Swiss Marketplace Group enables it to expand its ecosystem to Switzerland’s largest real estate portals, such as Homegate and Immoscout24. Through its partner Brixel, the company provides services related to property transactions and promotion financing. The company's collaboration with Houzy, Switzerland’s leading homeowner platform, connects its clients with a nationwide network of qualified craftsmen.
Competition
In Personal Banking, the company’s main competitors are the cantonal banks, Raiffeisen, Post Finance and other regional and local Swiss banks.
Asset Management
The company is a global, large-scale and diversified asset manager offering investment capabilities and strategies, across all major traditional and alternative asset classes, to institutions, wholesale intermediaries and Global Wealth Management clients.
Following the acquisition of the Credit Suisse Group, the company has become one of the leading Europe-based asset managers, with total invested assets of USD 1.8 trillion. The company focuses on meeting the evolving needs of its clients by capitalizing on the products and areas where it has a differentiated and scalable offering, and by expanding its strong partnership with the other business divisions across the Group.
Asset Management is organized into five areas: Client Coverage; Global Real Assets; Investments; Unified Global Alternatives; and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) area. The company covers the main asset management markets globally and has a local presence in 24 locations across four regions: the Americas; Asia Pacific; EMEA; and Switzerland. The company has nine main hubs: Chicago; the Hong Kong SAR; London; New York; Shanghai; Singapore; Sydney; Tokyo; and Zurich.
The company is committed to delivering investment excellence and to creating value for its clients that endures through cycles. To serve its clients’ alternative investment needs, the company's UGA business maintains, manages, and curates one of the world’s premier open architecture platforms across hedge funds, private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, and multi-alternative investment products. The company is also able to provide access to exclusive co-investments and secondary market opportunities for its more sophisticated clients. In addition, the company offers access to a comprehensive range of direct investment capabilities across hedge funds and real assets, as well as its leading non-investment-grade fixed-income capabilities managed through its Credit Investment Group.
The company is able to leverage its specialist teams, proprietary technology and expertise in customization to provide its clients with a compelling range of solutions across asset classes.
The company also collaborates across business divisions to deliver its best capabilities to clients. Building on the success of this platform, the company also extending its offering to meet the needs of wholesale clients in this attractive market.
The company’s Partnerships Solutions business draws on its value chain across the Group to provide customized full-service fiduciary, investments and technology solutions for clients. Those include curated access to best-in-class third-party traditional and alternative investment managers, as well as a comprehensive suite of proprietary technology solutions and research services.
Competition
The company’s main competitors are global firms with wide-ranging capabilities and distribution channels, such as Alliance Bernstein, Allianz Asset Management, Amundi, BlackRock, DWS, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Schroders, State Street Global Advisors and T. Rowe Price.
Investment Bank
The Investment Bank provides services to institutional, corporate and wealth management clients, helping them raise capital, invest and manage risks, while targeting attractive and sustainable risk-adjusted returns for the Group’s shareholders. The company’s traditional strengths are in equities, foreign exchange, research, advisory services and capital markets, complemented by a focused rates and credit platform. The company uses its data-driven research and technology capabilities to help clients adapt to evolving market structures and changes in regulatory, technological, economic and competitive landscapes.
Aiming to deliver market-leading solutions by using the company’s intellectual capital and electronic platforms, it works closely with Global Wealth Management, Personal & Corporate Banking and Asset Management to bring the best of the Group’s capabilities to the company’s clients.
The company’s two business areas, Global Banking and Global Markets, are organized globally by product. The company’s business is regionally diversified, with a presence in more than 30 countries. The company covers the main investment banking markets globally and has major financial hubs across four regions: the Americas; Asia Pacific; EMEA; and Switzerland.
The company’s priority is providing high-quality execution and seamless client service, through an integrated, solutions-led approach, with disciplined growth in the advisory and execution businesses, while accelerating its digital transformation. In Global Banking, the company’s position itself as trusted advisors via the company’s client coverage and ability to provide access to the wider suite of UBS’s capabilities.
The Investment Bank consists of two areas: Global Markets, which is supported by Investment Bank Research; and Global Banking. The company’s global coverage model utilizes its international industry expertise and product capabilities to meet clients’ emerging needs.
The company’s Global Banking business offers a broad range of investment banking products and services to its clients. Global Banking advises clients on strategic business opportunities, such as mergers, acquisitions and related strategic matters, and helps them raise capital, in both public and private markets, to fund their activities. With teams located across the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific regions, the company’s banking coverage offers clients local market expertise coupled with access to a global network.
The company’s Global Markets business helps clients engage with local markets globally, providing nimble, innovative and bespoke access to solutions, from market and insight tools to trade strategies and execution. The company distributes, trades, finances and clear cash equities and equity-linked products, as well as structuring, originating and distributing new equity and equity-linked issues. The company provides flexible, innovative and bespoke access to solutions, from market and insight tools to trading strategies and execution.
The company’s Investment Bank Research business continues to publish research based on primary data to concentrate on data-driven outcomes and offers clients differentiated content about major financial markets and securities around the globe, with analysts based in more than 20 countries and with coverage of more than 3,700 stocks in 49 different countries.
The company’s capabilities, core products and services has been enhanced by the integration, which has enabled it to deliver these products and services to an expanded institutional and corporate client base. In addition, the company is now better positioned to serve Global Wealth Management, offering investment banking capabilities, and to further enhance its connections with wealth management clients.
The Investment Bank offers clients global advice and access to the world’s primary, secondary and private capital markets, including through an array of sustainability-focused advice, products, research and events. The company helps meet clients’ needs with respect to environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations and sustainable finance, helping to reshape business models and investment opportunities and to develop sustainable finance products and solutions.
Competition
The company’s main competitors are the major global investment banks (e.g. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs) and corporate investment banks (e.g. Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase).
Group functions
The company’s Group functions are support and control functions that provide services to the Group, focusing on effectiveness, risk mitigation and efficiency.
The company’s Group functions include the following major areas: Group Services (which consists of the Group Operations and Technology Office, Group Compliance, Regulatory & Governance, Group Finance, Group Risk Control, Group Human Resources and Corporate Services, Communications & Branding, Group Legal, the Group Integration Office, Group Sustainability and Impact and the Chief Strategy Office) and Group Treasury.
Group Services
The vast majority of the support and control functions are fully aligned or shared among the business divisions. The activities of the businesses and support and control functions are closely aligned to improve efficiency and create a working environment built on accountability and collaboration.
Group Treasury
Group Treasury manages balance sheet structural risk (e.g. interest rate, structural foreign exchange and collateral risks), as well as the risks associated with the company’s liquidity, capital and funding portfolios. Group Treasury serves all five business divisions, and its risk management is integrated into the Group risk governance framework.
Regulation and supervision
The company and its subsidiaries are subject to consolidated supervision by FINMA under the Swiss Banking Act and related ordinances, which impose standards for matters such as capital adequacy and risk diversification rules, liquidity, internal control systems, business conduct, and corporate governance.
In the U.S., UBS is subject to regulation and supervision by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (the Federal Reserve Board) under a number of laws. The company and UBS AG are subject to the Bank Holding Company Act, pursuant to which the Federal Reserve Board has supervisory authority over the company’s U.S. operations.
In addition to being a financial holding company under the Bank Holding Company Act, UBS AG has US branches, which are authorized and supervised by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the OCC). UBS AG and Credit Suisse International are registered as swap dealers with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the CFTC) and registered as securities-based swap dealers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC).
UBS Americas Holding LLC is the intermediate holding company for the company’s operations in the US outside of the UBS AG branch network, as required under the Dodd–Frank Act, and is subject to requirements established by the Federal Reserve Board related to risk-based capital, liquidity, the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) stress testing and capital planning process, and resolution planning and governance.
UBS Bank USA, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)-insured depository institution subsidiary, is licensed and regulated by state regulators in Utah and is also supervised by the FDIC.
UBS Financial Services Inc., UBS Securities LLC, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and several other US subsidiaries of UBS are subject to regulation by a number of different government agencies and self-regulatory organizations, including the SEC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the CFTC, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and national securities exchanges, depending on the nature of their business. Certain of the company’s activities in the U.S. are subject to regulation by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The company’s regulated UK operations are mainly subject to the authority of the Prudential Regulation Authority (the PRA), which is part of the Bank of England (the BoE), and the Financial Conduct Authority (the FCA). The company is also subject to the rules of the London Stock Exchange and other securities and commodities exchanges of which UBS AG is a member.
UBS AG has a UK-registered branch, UBS AG London Branch, which serves as a global booking center for the company’s Investment Bank, with regulated subsidiaries that provide asset management services. Credit Suisse International, Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Limited and Credit Suisse (UK) Limited are authorized and regulated by the FCA and subject to the authority of the PRA.
UBS Europe SE, headquartered in Germany, is subject to the direct supervision of the European Central Bank (the ECB), as well as to continued conduct, consumer protection and anti-money -laundering-related supervision by the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and supervisory support by the German Bundesbank. The entity is subject to EU and German laws and regulations. UBS Europe SE maintains branches in Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, and is subject to conduct supervision by authorities in all those countries.
In mainland China, the company has multiple licenses to operate the respective business lines of UBS AG and Credit Suisse AG, and the various entities are subject to regulation by a number of different government agencies.
In Australia, UBS AG Australia Branch is supervised by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the Reserve Bank of Australia, and the Australian Securities Exchange.
In Japan, UBS Securities Japan Co., Ltd. and Credit Suisse Securities (Japan) Limited are supervised by the Financial Services Agency and the Japan Exchange Group. UBS AG Tokyo Branch is supervised by the Financial Services Agency and the Bank of Japan. UBS SuMi TRUST Wealth Management Co., Ltd. is supervised by the Financial Services Agency and the Japanese Ministry of Finance. UBS Asset Management (Japan) Ltd and UBS Japan Advisors Inc. are supervised by the Financial Services Agency.
The company is also subject to laws and regulations prohibiting corrupt or illegal payments to government officials and other persons, including the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act.
The company is subject to regulations concerning the use and protection of customer, employee and other personal and confidential information. This includes provisions under Swiss law, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) and laws of other jurisdictions.
History
The company was founded in 1862. The company was incorporated in 2014. The company was formerly known as UBS AG and changed its name to UBS Group AG in December 2014.
