Winners rationale

Asia’s private banks are pouring vast resources into equipping their staff with skills necessary for achieving long-term business sustainability. Those that invested early in their learning and development offering are now at a point when they can reflect on the relative strengths and weaknesses of their initiatives and make meaningful improvements. Such is the case with UBS, a perennial trailblazer when it comes to employee development. Indeed, UBS’s goals for its recently relaunched UBS University were to optimise the existing core shelf, digitalise a number of learning initiatives, and grow its curriculum. It has delivered on all fronts.

Employees’ learning experience begins at day one with mandatory training. In 2018, UBS condensed its six New Joiner modules to just one, saving a combined 5,000 days in training annually and 4.5 hours in seat time for each new staff member. Following onboarding, employees are granted access to UBS Wealth Management’s role-specific curriculum, which is structured according to role and career stage and offers a host of programmes, academies, and certifications.

Included in the curriculum for client advisors and desk heads is UBS’s WM Certification — a programme designed to build and enhance the competencies of client-facing staff. In 2018, the certification was externalised and digitalised, resulting in a new ‘one-stop shop’ platform through which users have access to learning materials, practice tests, and schedules. Content has also been modernised and cut by more than half, freeing up time for learners to utilise the expanded range of study notes, videos, practice questions, and mock exams.

Client advisors can also partake in the Associate Programme, which targets four learning pillars — client prospecting and service, risk management and compliance, market and investment knowledge, and operations and processes — and senior client-facing professionals can enrol in the WM Master programme for which successful participants receive a dual degree from the University of Rochester and University of Bern.

And with its eye on the future, UBS has built a pipeline for junior client advisors that begins with the PWMA Apprenticeship for second- and third-year university students, followed by the Summer Internship and Graduate Talent Programmes. After gaining three-to-five years of work experience, aspiring bankers can then join the year-long CA Associate Programme that equips them with the skills they need to establish and grow their client books.

Overall, UBS’s efforts have paid off, with a higher percentage of staff reporting that the learning opportunities provided by their employer are helpful, innovative, and in keeping with their career objectives.

UBS is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Learning & Development for 2018.