By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi and Oliver Hirt
ZURICH (Reuters) – UBS’s new hybrid digital wealth management platform has attracted $3.7 billion in its first year, boosting chief executive Ralph Hamers’ strategy of winning more business from the lower echelons of the global rich.
The world’s biggest wealth manager is trying to improve its digital services to reach customers outside its super rich core client base, with a new online platform called MyWay open to people with 250,000 Swiss francs ($278,000) upwards.
UBS’s emphasis on a digital approach to customers highlights a major shift in the world of private banking, where human connections and personal contact are usually the key to doing business with the very wealthy.
The project, started in May last year before Hamers’ became CEO, has the potential to pull in $30 billion within the next 12 months, a source familiar with the matter said. A UBS spokesman confirmed that target and current assets of $3.7 billion.
At UBS’s first-quarter results in April, Hamers unveiled an unexpected new strategic focus – that the bank would target…
