UBS wealth management Americas adds assets but pace slows in tough 2022

UBS Group's global wealth management business in the Americas continued to reel in net new client assets last year, although the amount of cash clients poured into accounts was not as robust as in 2021, a terrific year for stocks.

UBS reported Tuesday morning that in the Americas region, its global wealth management business attracted net new fee-generating assets of $17 billion in the 12 months of last year, with $4.2 billion of that coming in during last three months of 2022.

That compares to the firm's terrific end to 2021, when UBS global wealth management in the Americas region added $21.9 billion in net new fee-generating assets for the quarter ending Dec. 31.

The last two years were almost mirror opposites in the stock market, with the S&P 500 stock index posting total returns with dividends of 28.7% in 2021, but declining 18.1% last year.

In the past, such a wild swing from one year to the next in the stock market would have spelled doom for large firms, but wealth management operations like UBS have been able to insulate themselves from the impact of stocks on their financial advisors. Net interest income, for example, was up slightly more than $1 billion year over year in the bank's global wealth management business.

The bank's global wealth management total revenue for 2022 was just shy of $19 billion, compared to $19.4 billion at the end of 2021, a decrease of 2.1%.

Meanwhile, UBS reported that it had 6,245 financial advisors in the Americas region at the end of last year compared to 6,218 at the end of the prior year, or basically flat for the year.

In a statement, UBS said it "recruited high-quality advisors in the second half of the year."