ZURICH – On Monday, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said that moving Credit Suisse clients in Switzerland onto the bank’s own platform from next year promises to be the main challenge of the toughest phase in integrating its former rival.
UBS Group (NYSE: UBS), which acquired Credit Suisse in March 2023 after it collapsed due to a series of financial setbacks, recently began transferring the fallen bank’s clients onto its system.
Ermotti said client migration was the most difficult stage of the integration, and that UBS would shortly move across accounts based in Singapore. Last month, UBS said it had completed those transfers in Luxembourg and Hong Kong.
“The big challenge is in Switzerland though,” Ermotti said in the text of a speech he was due to give in Frankfurt. From next year, UBS would transfer more than a million client relationships in the country in three waves, he said.
Last month, Ermotti said that moving Credit Suisse clients onto UBS systems should take about 18 months.
The demise of Credit Suisse left Switzerland with only one global bank, and the government is drawing up new regulations aimed at ensuring that the enlarged UBS cannot get into the same kind of trouble, lest it threaten Swiss economic stability.
UBS executives have urged authorities not to hit the bank with onerous regulations, and Ermotti said increased intervention by the state against entrepreneurial freedom and potentially excessively restrictive financial policy posed risks to growth.
Ermotti said the takeover of Credit Suisse had helped to restore financial stability. He argued that technological advances, including through artificial intelligence, would help the banking sector meet some of the challenges it faces.
Only strong and profitable banks would be able to afford such technological investments, he added.
