A new era of mass digital consumption, disruptive millennials, and regulatory upheaval is compelling private banks to enhance their client experience to ensure a holistic, end-to-end journey — especially in Asia where many local economies leapfrogged traditional brick-and-mortar models to the modern age. In 2018, the industry continued advancing its endeavours in the field, simultaneously developing more channels of communication, offering new functionalities online, and reinforcing traditional approaches to client engagement.

UBS Global Wealth Management’s relentless commitment to creating a seamless on and offline experience distinguished it from competitors in 2018. In one brief year, the bank managed to launch a flurry of new digital capabilities made accessible to end-clients and make material organisational changes to enhance the relevance and quality of new initiatives.

Although not groundbreaking, the bank has introduced a series of new digital capabilities to expand the activities clients can conduct online and enhance various facets of this engagement. Online banking now includes an optimised two-factor authentication security process; secure intra-account transfers; democratisation of popular instant messaging channels; personalised landing page content; and a full range of trading across equities, bonds, funds, and select structured products. And UBS’s digital efforts have extended beyond broad global or regional enhancements to the single market level to include a wealth management app for its domestic Taiwanese clients which offers 24/7 access to comprehensive portfolio and performance analysis.

UBS’s commitment to improving client experience is even felt at the organisational level, with a restructuring that includes a newly created client strategy office (CSO) designed to understand the needs, aspirations, and behaviour of its wealth management clients based on client research and analytics to deliver effective strategic content, marketing, pricing structures, and business solutions. It has also established a co-creation pool of relationship managers for direct contributions to develop new solutions through a state-of-the-art lab.

And the bank has not forgone its traditional engagement with clients. It continues to host strong events with relevant content spanning healthcare and technology as well as billionaire and second-generation networking functions. Its flagship UBS Wealth Insights event boasted an attendance of about 3,000 from 25 cities in the region.

A seamless and holistic end-to-end journey covering a myriad of on and offline channels to provide clients with relevant content, tools, and functionalities separated UBS from its peers in 2018.

UBS Global Wealth Management is Asian Private Banker’s Best Private Bank – Client Experience for 2018.