UBS Wealth Management today announces the launch of UBS SmartWealth, a digital wealth management platform that will bring UBS’s vast expertise as the world’s largest private bank to a new audience.
The new platform uses proprietary technology and will be made available to a group of customers in the UK from November this year, with a full UK roll-out taking place in early 2017. UBS Wealth Management experts in London and Zurich have spent the past year developing the platform.
UBS SmartWealth provides regulated and real-time advice online. It recommends a suitable investment strategy based on a client’s individual financial situation relative to their attitude to risk and an understanding of their life stage, assets and goals.
The platform puts life goals at the centre of the client’s wealth management strategy. Performance is regularly checked to provide clients with ongoing updates against their goals and possible actions to help them achieve their plan.
Client portfolios are adjusted on an ongoing basis, relative to the views of UBS’s worldwide research and investment experts, who assess the financial markets, outlooks and political situation around the clock.
UBS SmartWealth will enable a new group of clients to invest with UBS in order to grow their wealth. With a minimum investment of £15,000, the platform allows clients to invest for the long term and provides access to the extensive economic and market insight of UBS Wealth Management’s global investment experts; helping clients better understand how developments in markets might affect their investments.
The new technology underpinning the platform will also transform UBS’s ability to service existing clients, simplifying processes such as account opening, and providing better ways to test attitudes to risk.
Clients will be able to invest via active and passive strategies, both informed by UBS’s Chief Investment Office.
Dirk Klee, Chief Operating Officer of UBS Wealth Management, said:
“UBS SmartWealth is a strategically important move for UBS. It enables us to bring our advice and expertise to a much wider audience, at first in the UK, but in time in other geographies too.
“Technology is changing the way financial services are delivered. The launch of UBS SmartWealth shows that digital innovation is not the sole reserve of start-ups. Large market-leading institutions have the resources to research, test and build transformative new products and services. This launch is an example of how we can blend the best of UBS with the best of start-up thinking and agility, meaning clients can access new innovations alongside the insight of worldwide investment and wealth planning experts.
“Many of the new technologies that make SmartWealth possible are now being applied to our broader business. UBS SmartWealth will bring the best of UBS to a new audience, and existing UBS Wealth Management clients will also benefit from the new technologies we have built.”
Jamie Broderick, Head of UBS Wealth Management UK, said:
“The UK is the perfect market in which to launch SmartWealth. The UK has developed a reputation for technology-led innovation in financial services. Regulation in the UK is progressive and has established support for new innovations. And over recent years, a significant advice gap has developed in the UK, leaving clear space in the market for a product like SmartWealth.
“UBS SmartWealth offers ongoing, interactive, expert and regulated advice on investments and planning for clients’ life goals. We’re bringing the product to a segment of the market that cannot be reached by traditional advisers because it is simply too expensive to do so, which means we can help close the UK’s advice gap. We can then marry that advice with the extensive investment experience and insight that UBS offers to clients all over the world.”
