Coup d’Oeil on the last 2 weeks of international Wealth Management news
UBS wealth management: 1-billion-franc-project involves more than 1,400 employees and will run through 2018
While Swiss financial place is shaken, many Swiss private banks consider outsourcing or establishing their operations in Luxembourg; UBS Wealth Management has decided to concentrate its infrastructure in Switzerland with a 1-billion project; effects on job employment are still unclear but cost reduction target is 2.1 billions.
Other news in the last 2 weeks:
- UBS Wealth Innovation Lab in Zurich and Amazon partner to give birth to a connected artificially intelligent banker. Read my leaps: this is ubs WEALTH innovation lab.
There is no reason not to make such a dialogue possible: Hello Alexa, my voice is my password. What is my portfolio performance and risk this morning? … And what were the triggers of this situation ? … Ok, so let’s reduce my exposure on US equity markets for now and stay cash. Alert me immediately on my mobile if the situation changes one way or the other.
- While Internet Of Things is trendy, with this UBS-Amazon’s Alexa, but also with the next to come Google home speaker, an attack took major US websites down on Friday. And the Trojan horses which launched the attack were internet-connected objects…
One month ago on September 13th, Bruce Schneier had revealed that someone was learning how he could take Internet down. It seems he learned quickly.
Technology is a Pharmakon: it can bring the best or the worst.
Let’s imagine a major blackout of Internet during a sudden and intense move of financial markets. Internet users would not be aware or would not be able to trigger their stop loss orders. I wonder how much wealth could evaporate during such a blackout. Let’s imagine it lasts 1 day, 2 days, 5 days… ?
- Swiss Federal Council unveils its strategy for financial markets: now that things have been cleaned in urgency, let’s stop reacting and start being offensive. Negotiation with European countries for market access on a bilateral basis, facilitation of business development for Fintech (sandbox and light license), compliance with international rules (taxes and AML), mitigation of risk (too big to fail) and involvement of industry players before setting up new regulation, form part of this strategy
- The US fiduciary rule, which is currently being pushed through the Congress, is considered the equivalent of the UK’s retail distribution review (RDR) and is also close to European investor protection included in MIFID II. It aims to put an end to hidden fees and conflicts of interest in the investment world, and will require advisers to pick products that are in their clients’ best interests. Effect might be to push even more investors towards passive ETF investing, like Robo-Advisors already do, as it is simpler to tick the box of the investor profile at the best price. At least, Blackrock is ready for this move and already saw changes in inflows.
- « Banks should be required to know their future markets. There is an effort to do. » says Jörg Gasser, new head of Swiss State Secretariat for International Financial matters (SFI).
Negotiation for market access are ongoing with France, Italy and Spain, and Joerg Gasser seems optimistic.
I personally believe it will happen, but most probably not before 2020 as we need to see what happens with Mifid2 and Automatic exchange of information in 2018, and certainly not before Brexit dust has settled.
Let’s face it, France, with its long tradition of banking monopoly, will want to wait for the effect of automatic exchange; France will want to maximize assets repatriation and lock them in, before giving access to Switzerland.
US will do the same with FATCA before looking at their own offshore issues. At least this is what I would do… no reason they would precipitate to satisfy Swiss banking. Swiss market share in Offshore banking dropped from 33% to 25% in 15 years. They may want to wait a little bit longer.
- US gun turns to Singapore thanks to Swiss probes collection.
- Bundesbank’s Claudia Buch predicts consolidation in European banking as the banking market is over supplied.
Update: We are sorry to inform you that after 2 years of good service, we discontinued this weekly news briefing.
