UBS global wealth management continued its strong 2021, and in the Americas region reported on Tuesday pre-tax profit of $559 million, up 51% year over year.
According to the company, this was supported by rising adviser productivity and record loan volumes, particularly in securities-backed lending and residential mortgages.
Meanwhile, its head count of financial advisers in the Americas region — the United States, Canada and Latin America — continued to decline, but appears to be stabilizing, dipping slightly this summer and reaching 6,266 at the end of September. That's a drop of 1.4% compared to the same period a year earlier, but is basically flat from the end of June.
UBS global wealth management Americas reported annualized revenue per adviser of $1.7 million, a 26% increase from the same time last year and unchanged from the previous quarter.
UBS recently revamped its separately managed account program and reported more than $5 billion on inflows for the quarter and more than $83 billion since its launch at the start of 2020.
UBS Group also said on Tuesday that it is starting a digital wealth manager in the U.S. to grab a bigger share of the country’s market for retirement savings and stock options, in a move that will pit it against the top Wall Street banks on their home turf, according to a report from Bloomberg news.
The new digital bank will service affluent customers with between $250,000 and $2 million in assets, a group that UBS hasn’t previously targeted in a meaningful way, chief financial officer Kirt Gardner said Tuesday, Bloomberg reported.
And while the bank plans to build the business organically, it’s open to acquisitions to accelerate the strategy, according to Chief Executive Ralph Hamers.
“Organic growth is basically the default,” Hamers told Bloomberg in an interview. But “if there is an inorganic option that could accelerate us into that direction, we would certainly consider it.”
— Bloomberg News contributed to this story
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