“The problem most wealth managers have is that their model is typically hostage to the private banker, and the individual flair of each and every private banker,” Dovey said. “We’ve interviewed nearly 20,000 customers, and they buy consistency more than anything else. It is clear clients don’t just go to private banks because they want them to make them 15 percent a year. They’re aware this is an unrealistic expectation.”
Diploma Course
Zeltner, who comes from a small town near Thun and originally wanted to study veterinary medicine before landing an apprenticeship at Swiss Bank Corp., which merged with Union Bank of Switzerland 11 years later to form UBS, said training client advisers is “absolutely key” to making sure CIO recommendations get understood and put to good use.
“People always underestimate what it takes to be a good banker,” Zeltner said.
Last year UBS started requiring all client advisers to take a diploma course about markets and portfolio management approved by Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, after having only an internal certification in the past. Markus Tanner, who’s responsible for training, said UBS is the first and only bank to get SECO certification for such a course.
“Previously, training was not mandatory,” Tanner said in an interview at the Seepark hotel in Thun. “Based on skill gaps, you were going to certain classes. Now everybody has to reach the benchmark we set.”
This year UBS started offering a masters course to select advisers like Najia, 45, who joined UBS a year-and-a-half ago from JPMorgan Chase & Co. The course, running from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. with breaks for food, started with a message: Wealth managers who don’t adapt to the historic changes in the industry may become extinct.
“Market leaders are at risk, since based on their superior performance see no urgency for change,” PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP says in mandatory reading for the course. “High performers historically are biggest losers.”
The group that started the course in Thun included client advisers from Switzerland, Germany, Panama and the Middle East, with most catering to customers who have more than $5 million to invest, Tanner said. About 100 people will be starting the two- year program in 2013, with a course taking place in Asia and another one in Switzerland later this year. UBS plans to offer the program to about 500 to 600 advisers, of 4,128 working at the wealth-management unit, Tanner said.
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