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Navigating client relationships with AI

Samantha Chiew
Samantha Chiew • 2 min read
Navigating client relationships with AI
At UBS, around 80% of AI-related initiatives focus on boosting efficiency and productivity. Photo: Bloomberg
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As investors worldwide chase AI-themed opportunities, organisations are exploring how to harness the technology. For banks like UBS, around 80% of AI-related initiatives focus on boosting efficiency and productivity, with the remaining 20% aimed at enhancing customer engagement.

This focus is particularly relevant for client advisors, who, according to Young Jin Yee of UBS, spend between three and four hours preparing for meetings. They must extract portfolio reports, compile relevant research on the asset classes invested by their clients, overlay the bank’s house view on the macroeconomic landscape and assemble it all into a customised presentation deck.

With AI tools, the client advisors are able to quickly build a dashboard showing not just the portfolio performance but also help project the portfolio’s cash flow in the coming six months, for example, taking into account expected dividends or other payments.

What this means is that the client advisors and their clients can have a “smart conversation”. The bank can draw on its reach and data to provide the insights, but the last-mile delivery by client advisors when they have a face-to-face meeting with their clients is critical.

Adopting AI means deeper and more meaningful relationships with clients. “That is our north star, we are not there yet, but we definitely want to,” says Young.

She estimates that with AI, each client advisor could potentially double the number of accounts they manage. Yet she is quick to add that capturing more business will still require hiring additional staff. From around 900 client advisors in Asia Pacific today, UBS is targeting a net increase of about 100 over the next few years. “We are the growth region. We want to continue to invest as well.”

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