UBS Wealth Management’s chief digital officer for APAC, Ketan Samani, tells Asian Private Banker about the Swiss major’s progress with its five digital initiatives rolled out over the past three years, including its digital advisory platform, UBS Advice, the bank’s fintech partnerships and its portfolio tracking app.
UBS Advice goes mobile
UBS Wealth Management’s flat-fee advisory platform, UBS Advice, was one of the first automated advisory solutions to enter the market in Asia. It was launched in 2014 and within just three months, UBS Advice managed to raise close to US$500 million from the bank’s Hong Kong and Singapore-based clients.
Samani says the app’s digital functionalities have since been developed further. “Last year, we pushed UBS Advice on our mobile app and we received great reviews from our clients as it allowed them to receive push notifications and access to research,” he says, adding that the roll out on mobile devices was “well recognised by the industry”.
Samani says that UBS WM also introduced a chat capability on UBS Advice for clients who wish to speak to their bankers while trawling through the bank’s CIO content.
UBS Advice is an overnight portfolio-monitoring system which analyses individual client portfolios against a set of predefined criteria and the UBS investment house view to put forward personalised investment opportunities.
The digital advisory platform, which some experts believe is akin to a robo advisor, saw a “positive response from Asia clients”, Yves Klenk, UBS Wealth Management’s then head of portfolio advisory APAC, told Asian Private Banker shortly after the launch.
In 2015, Taiwanese regulators gave the Swiss private bank the green light to launch UBS Advice in Taiwan. However, the platform exists as a service only and is not available on mobile, Samani clarifies.
Tracking and portfolio app on wrists
After making significant tweaks to UBS Wealth Management’s portfolio-tracking app last year – following the Asia launch in 2015 – Samani says that the app’s adoption rate has been “exceptional”. Though he declined to comment on specific numbers, he did say that since the tracking and portfolio app was made available on Apple watches, there has been a notable rise in adoption rates.
“We saw that a simplified, clean user interface with curated information was most important for clients when it came to usage,” he says, reflecting on a number of tweaks to the app.
The app leverages technology that can track a client’s portfolio, test it against critical factors and flag any deviations from the client’s investment strategy. The portfolio ‘health checks’ are all benchmarked against UBS’ CIO house view.
The portfolio-tracking solution is UBS Wealth Management’s second client-facing app in the region. In April 2014, the Swiss heavyweight rolled out UBS Navigator.
Morning Brief uses AI
Of UBS Wealth Management’s dossier of digital initiatives, the most recent go-live was Morning Brief. The digital tool was rolled out to UBS’ private banking clients in Singapore and Hong Kong in June this year as a “free app”, according to Samani.
Morning Brief harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to give clients advice based on their accounts, UBS’ Kathryn Shih told Asian Private Banker on the sidelines of a conference earlier this year.
The app is available to clients with Apple Store or Google Play accounts registered in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan.
Bank account aggregator
The Swiss major is currently piloting a bank account aggregator solution – a tool that collects different bank account statements to create a holistic view of a client’s investment profile.
Samani notes that account aggregation was previously offered by UBS Wealth Management, though this service was done manually.
“When automated, this solution adds the extra value for clients and provides scalability to our service,” he says, adding that the bank will test the offering with Hong Kong- and Singapore-based clients.
Last year, Samani said that Mesitis was one of the 20 external fintechs using UBS Wealth Management’s innovation lab. The Singapore-based fintech is known for its bank account aggregation solution, Canopy, which was recently adopted by Credit Suisse Private Banking for its Asia operations.
Regtech to ensure compliance
Samani also spoke about the bank’s recently revealed tie-up with Singapore-based fintech FinChat – an initiative that is in a proof-of-concept phase and is aimed at developing a secure communication platform for the lender’s relationship managers and clients in order to resolve the “massive problem of client inconvenience”.
“We are particularly looking to help our client advisors to be able to chat with their clients on public chat platforms and we can record this chat,” he says. “This way they will not be breaking any compliance rules.”
At the time of the announcement, Samani said that the platform would include built-in monitoring middleware to provide compliance teams with a search window and the ability to flag any specific words. “This is a simple but important step to take to make our client advisors more compliant.”
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