Speeding ahead in Silicon Valley

Over the summer, I spent some time in Silicon Valley, the home of technology and innovation. I took part in a program at Singularity University, a group whose mission is to help all of us understand how to utilize cutting-edge technologies to positively impact the world around us.

I spend every day talking and thinking about technology and ways to make it do more for UBS Wealth Management’s clients and staff. For two decades I’ve worked with different technology and I’ve seen some amazing changes – I remember not only when we didn’t have emails on our phones in our pockets, but when we didn’t even have emails at all!

So given my experience and what I do day-in, day-out, I love that the speed at which technology is developing still astounds me. Spending time with the kind of thinkers and doers at the Singularity University helped me see that we are in for some amazing technological innovations.

The buzz words we hear such as AI, Robo and virtual reality will become a living, breathing reality

For me though, the focus must always be on what these innovations mean for UBS Wealth Management and the business models of our industry. One thing is for sure: technology will play an even greater role in all aspects of our daily lives and business. The buzz words we hear such as AI, Robo and virtual reality will become a living, breathing reality and the client experience will have technology at the core, complementing the human advisor. In that sense Technology is not a threat to our business model, on the contrary, it will help us improve services to the advantage of our clients by implementing intelligent software that adds to our traditional offering.

The implementation spectrum for new technologies is incredibly vast, and I'm trying to really encourage everyone within my function to think of new ways to use them in a banking context. Many of the generated ideas harbor great potential. Just look at one example concerning face recognition technology: it could help our clients decipher their true underlying and often hidden feelings. Knowing exactly what it is clients truly want could tremendously support our client advisors in offering even further improved and tailored financial services to their clients.

This is the kind of service people expect from UBS. By looking at technology enhanced solutions we are really trying to speed up the process to align the client experience we offer with these new but consistently changing client expectations. With their capacity to make our processes more efficient and easy-to-use, I can see new technologies coming online and gaining importance very quickly. New products and services similar to the one mentioned above aren't a far-off future reality but are likely to happen in five years or less.

AI will support us in helping clients make smarter investment decisions – and that’s very exciting indeed.

One thing that is becoming increasingly apparent to me is that the power of artificial intelligence is really unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Tasks that now take dozens of analysts' weeks crunching numbers on spreadsheets and mapping out scenarios, AI can do in microseconds. Or on a simpler task, they can sift through a client’s data and interactions with UBS and help us know what they need before they even ask us. Through the power of insight and personalization, AI will support us in helping clients make smarter investment decisions – and that’s very exciting indeed.

In my next post, I will explore how personal data is affected by all these innovations and the big data resulting from it, in order to shine a light on how we at UBS are protecting our clients' data.