UBS ups the ante in client education
This week the Swiss bank launches a new learning programme for clients
You've got to educate to accumulate could become the new mantra in wealth management.
Most private banks offer little by way of structured education for clients, beyond the summer boot camps that provide a crash course in wealth management for the children of top customers.
But it may be time for them to take education more seriously, according to Sebastian Dovey, managing director of wealth consultancy Scorpio Partnership.
"The top banks have education initiatives but they virtually all focus only on the next generation and position it as a feel-good for the bank and clients. But education is not just something private banks should offer in the summer months as a favour to entertain the children of clients. It is a serious commitment."
For the past 18 months, Dovey has been working on a project to overhaul UBS's education programme. The new initiative, called Dialogue, launches this week and unlike rivals' efforts it will be catering for all age groups, not just the young and inexperienced.
Walter Rambousek, managing director at UBS global wealth management and head of global key client education, said the bank asked Scorpio to survey 100 of its wealthiest clients to ask them what they wanted in terms of education.
The results were emphatic: 79% said they expected UBS to play a role in their education on wealth issues and 76% said that if they were better informed they would do more business with the bank.
Dovey said: "This is clearly a more valuable use of the marketing budget. UBS's clients told us they regarded golf or sailing events as a waste of the bank's money and would much rather they invested in education."
The result is a curriculum that covers 10 topics, under three main themes: investment strategies, managing family wealth and corporate finance. Two levels of tuition are available for each topic, to cater for differing levels of knowledge.
Courses in six of the 10 topics will be launched this year in Europe and Asia, each lasting between two and three days, with the four remaining courses rolled out next year. Numbers are limited to between 25 and 30 clients on each course.
While a small group of external academics and experts will be used to teach various sessions, the feedback UBS had from clients was that they wanted to see the bank using its own resources.
The cost of the courses will be charged back to the clients' advisers. "The best advisers are very enthusiastic about it because they see it as a tool to deepen their relationships," said Rambousek.
As with next generation courses (which UBS includes as part of the programme), the ultimate aim is to use the courses to help cement relationships: "It is very important for us to know different generations of a family but that is not easy, given the main relationship tends to be with only a few members of the family," said Rambousek.
There is, of course, also a soft sell involved.
"This is targeted at our wealthiest clients, but it is also for clients who have much more wealth than we manage for them," said Rambousek. "One of the goals for us is to to get them to shift more of it to UBS and this programme is a way of building trust and expertise resulting in deepening the relationship."
According to Dovey: "Banks generally have not invested in developing their clients' level of knowledge."
But if UBS's initiative succeeds in giving its business a much-needed boost, there will be plenty of other private banks rushing to overhaul their education efforts.
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