UBS Group AG (NYSE:UBS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator: The next question is from Nicolas Payen from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Nicolas Payen: I have two on Wealth Management. The first one, more on APAC, and we can see that your number of adviser is decreasing despite China reopening and probably a higher level of activity expected. So I wanted to know, how do you intend to capture this higher level of activity with potentially less advisers? And the second one is on the U.S. I’d like to know if it’s possible to get a bit of color regarding the breakdown of your net inflows between an increase of share of wallet from existing clients versus new clients coming in at UBS U.S. Wealth Management.

Ralph Hamers: Thank you, Nicolas. So on the first one, we’re not really kind of after a specific adviser count, so to say. For us, it is important that the advice that we have, they have the right clients, they have client — there’s right client relationships, they can increase the share of wallet. The productivity of each adviser is important to us as well, and that is what we truly manage on. And we feel that with the current level of advisers, and we continue to optimize that and clearly manage for performance and pay for performance, that we can certainly cope with some of the upside there. And clearly, we will continue to hire the right advisers as we have been doing up to now, and we will continue to do so also going forward.

Sarah Youngwood: And on your question for the U.S., you can think of the inflows for this quarter as being about half-half related to net recruiting versus same store, and same store usually is exactly with the same clients. So that gives you a sense.

Operator: The next question is from Piers Brown from HSBC.

Piers Brown: Yes, I’ve got one on Global Wealth and one on litigation. So Global Wealth, actually just to follow on from the previous question, but in terms of the U.S. adviser numbers, I think you talked last quarter about having a strong hiring pipeline, but actually the adviser numbers look like they’ve dipped in the fourth quarter. So if you could just talk to what the hiring plan looks like for this year in the U.S. on the adviser front? And the second question, on litigation. The French tax case, it looks like the wording in the 4Q report is pretty much identical to the 3Q report. Is there any update on timing at all on that particular issue?

Ralph Hamers: Yes. On the second one, so what you have read is what you have read, and that is what we disclosed. And I can’t give you more color there. Otherwise, it would have been in the disclosure anyway. So you read it well, Piers. On the first one, also there, we have a — we will continue to recruit in the U.S. It’s just that in the last year, when the markets were so high, we basically held back on recruitment in the first quarter and also the second quarter a bit. Because with every recruitment, you basically — I mean you have to pay for the business they bring. So at that moment, we held back a bit and then we accelerated the recruitment, and we will continue the recruitment of FAs in the U.S. As I said, it’s very important for us to get the FAs that come in at the level of productivity that is basically the market bench for us, right?

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