Dive Brief:
- Swiss banking giant UBS is accelerating its artificial intelligence investments, with plans to redesign front- and back-office processes, the bank’s CEO, Sergio Ermotti, told investors Wednesday during the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call.
- Ermotti said it’s critical that UBS apply a “one-bank approach to our entire operation” as it rolls out AI-enabled capabilities to improve services and productivity and continues its integration with Credit Suisse, which UBS acquired in 2023.
- “Building on these strong foundations, we are investing in a portfolio of large-scale transformational AI programs designed to increase our operational resilience, enhance the client experience and unlock higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness across the organization,” Ermotti said during the call.
Dive Insight:
UBS is not alone in its hunt for efficiencies, as banks across the globe deploy the latest AI advancements and craft leadership roles focused on the technology.
The financial services firm launched more than 300 AI use cases across its operations in 2025 and its first chief AI officer — Daniele Magazzeni, former analytics chief at JPMorgan Chase — started last month.
“We are seeing increasingly strong adoption of AI across the firm, supported by our rollout of next generation tools and platforms to improve efficiency and productivity,” Ermotti said.
UBS’s AI projects will unfold alongside the company’s integration with Credit Suisse. Ermotti said while he’s confident in UBS’s ability to substantially complete the integration by the end of 2026, the final wave of client migration “has the highest level of complexity and is a key dependency to fully winding down the legacy infrastructure through the end of the year.”
As banks including UBS pursue AI projects, they’re also experiencing executive shakeups and retooling leadership structures.
Ronald Jansen, global head of the AI lab in UBS’s global banking division, left the company this month. In a LinkedIn post, Jansen shared that he’s starting a new position as head of AI for human resources and employee experience at JPMorgan Chase.
Jansen is not the only UBS executive with AI responsibility to leave in recent months. Mike Dargan, once UBS’s chief technology and operations officer — to whom Magazzeni was set to report — left the bank to become the next CEO of German challenger N26.
In other AI-related moves, Wells Fargo in November changed Saul Van Beurden’s role from the bank’s CEO of consumer, small and business banking to head of AI and co-CEO of consumer banking and lending. Wells later hired Amazon Web Services alum Faraz Shafiq to lead its AI products and services arm.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia also tweaked its leadership structure, adding Ranil Boteju as its chief AI officer in December. Boteju formerly served as chief data and analytics officer at Lloyds.
