Awards for Excellence 2020
|
|
“During the first quarter our assets increased by 15% due to net new money, transaction revenues are up year over year 55%, our lending share has grown 25% compared to a year ago and our costs are down 1%,” says Ali Janoudi, head of Middle East and Africa for wealth management at UBS.
As a result, the contribution to the bank’s profits coming from the Middle East and Africa region has grown to more than 20%. The region is already well staffed, with close to 300 team members worldwide dedicated to the Middle East, as well as 80 people on the ground, and hiring is continuing throughout 2020.
But it’s not just UBS’s growth that wins it the Euromoney award for best bank for wealth management in the Middle East this year, but rather how it has committed to the region in all aspects of its business.
|
|
|
Ali Janoudi |
Since March, when Covid-19 began to spread around the world, the bank has been offering webcasts from its chief investment office and multiple daily research updates – including coverage of real estate and Middle Eastern bond issuers.
In May, the bank also rolled out a new application called UBS Welcome that facilitates the onboarding of new clients remotely using copies of their passports.
Longer term, UBS has been pivotal in bringing sustainable investments to clients in the region. For example, it was the first bank to launch a 100% sustainable multi-asset portfolio for private clients back in 2018. That portfolio now has more than $10 billion in invested assets.
There is also the UBS Climate Aware strategy, with over $3 billion in assets under management, which is underpinned by the asset management division’s active corporate engagement programme that is helping to drive change to a low-carbon economy.
In philanthropy, in the last quarter of 2019 several of its clients from the Middle East joined the bank on an insights trip with UBS’s Optimus Foundation across South Africa. There they met with local communities to see firsthand the challenges faced and solutions offered in terms of child protection, healthcare and early childhood development.
Unafraid to offer support where needed in the region, the foundation recently received fatwas for two projects supporting education for displaced populations, one of them for Syrian refugees, including programmes to enable Syrian children refugees to return to formal schooling.
