FX sales have been squeezed in both directions for a decade. Electronification took the routine flow, and clients who once needed a salesperson for a price now only need one when something is complicated. What remains is a harder job: knowing the client well enough to be useful before they ask. UBS has rebuilt its sales franchise around that challenge and in 2025 its success showed in rankings, revenue and client feedback alike.
The premise is that the salesperson is only as good as what is behind them. “At its core, effective sales is about understanding clients and delivering relevant, personalised service in a seamless way,” says Adrian Boehler, global head of macro distribution. “By combining data, technology and AI with human judgement, we’re helping our teams provide more timely insights, more relevant solutions and a better client experience.”
Since most client feedback now arrives as data rather than conversation, UBS’s argument is that a bank not working in that data is missing most of what its clients are telling it.
Two systems carry the weight. UBS’s Client360 customer management platform consolidates interaction history, revenue trends, wallet opportunities, coverage gaps and external benchmark data into a single view, with an AI layer on top. Crucially, it spans the firm, not just FX.
At its core, effective sales is about understanding clients and delivering relevant, personalised service in a seamless way
Adrian Boehler
UBS’s FX Engine Room platform does the analytical work. It tracks how clients trade rather than simply what they trade, flags P&L decay and engagement trends, and lets coverage teams intervene before a relationship weakens rather than after. The most telling example runs the other way: UBS showed a systematic hedge fund that it was consistently executing at illiquid times; the client adjusted its model and now trades when the market is deeper, lowering its own transaction costs.
That is the philosophy behind the technology. Clients have spent years optimising the price at the point of execution. UBS’s pitch is to add value across the lifecycle rather than compete on spread alone.
Structure converts this into revenue. UBS runs named, coordinated coverage programmes across regions and asset classes, each with clear accountability. Project Samba, targeting Brazilian institutional clients and family offices, connected teams in Brazil, New York, London and Asia, and delivered 40% year-on-year growth. It works because UBS treated Brazilian hedge funds as sophisticated emerging market investors wanting to extend into Asia, not as a domestic account to be serviced locally.
Project Phoenix embedded FX into prime brokerage and equity relationships in Asia from day one. For one Singapore equity hedge fund, FX revenues rose about 300% to roughly $5 million annualised, and now account for about half the client’s total revenue across the equity franchise.
The gains are not confined to new business. Unusually, precious metals sits inside FX at UBS, which lets the bank build gold crosses such as XAU/CNH off its bullion franchise and FX pricing infrastructure at once.
Independent client surveys corroborate this. UBS ranks first globally for sales quality, first for top-three relationship, first for most intense coverage, first for understanding and anticipating client needs, and first for business momentum.
His measure is what happens in dislocated markets, when that claim gets tested. On that measure, UBS’s sales franchise was the most consistent in the market during 2025.
