From its Asian headquarters in Singapore, UBS has introduced what it calls its latest state-of-the-art offering for wealth management clients, "UBS Advice".

From its Asian headquarters in Singapore, UBS yesterday introduced what it calls its latest state-of-the-art offering for wealth management clients, "UBS Advice".

The portfolio monitoring system boasts technology, speed and calibration tools that were previously only available to institutional clients.

The bank kept tight-lipped on the financial cost of implementing and rolling out the new advisory mechanism, when asked about this by this publication. However, it did state that significant time and cost had been incurred in perfecting the system. The Zurich-headquartered firm is confident it has made a unique proposition. So much so, in fact, that it calls the product a game changer, as they say in US sports.  

UBS Advice uses a portfolio-monitoring system to analyse individual client portfolios against a set of pre-defined criteria to identify portfolio quality issues and propose customised investment opportunities. This process is designed to match client portfolios with their chosen investment strategy and UBS views on global market developments. The service is available at a contractually agreed flat fee.

Launched in Switzerland early last year, UBS Advice has since also been launched in other parts of Europe and has so far secured more than SFr6.7 billion of invested assets to date.

On hand to officially launch the advisory suite in Singapore were Kathryn Shih, chief executive of UBS Wealth Management, Asia Pacific, flanked by Edmund Koh, CEO of UBS Wealth Management for Southeast Asia.

“Buy and hold was no longer an efficient investment strategy,” Shih said.

“Many of our Asian clients are more comfortable with investing in names they know and this tends to lead to a strong home bias towards Asian assets, where it may be harder to achieve optimum returns. More than ever, it is important to gain access to overseas market opportunities and information that will facilitate decision-making. By providing information at their fingertips, UBS Advice empowers Asian clients to navigate across the global investment landscape swiftly and nimbly. In short, UBS Advice brings the wealth management industry in Asia to the next level,” she said.

Juerg Zeltner, CEO of UBS Wealth Management said of the venture: "We are living in a rapidly changing world. The financial landscape is more globally interlinked, faster moving, often riskier, and certainly more regulated than ever before. In response, we have built-up our investment management capabilities and developed a unique, dynamic, integrated value- chain that ensures the provision of high-quality investment advice and solutions, such as UBS Advice, to enable us to grow and protect our clients’ wealth."

The main features of the new Advisory Offering are: Tailor-made advice and service based on client portfolio and investment profile’; five broadly diversified investment strategies from which to choose – Income, Yield, Balanced, Growth and Equity; portfolio quality is monitored systematically with state-of-the-art technology that assesses critical risk factors; clients are provided with up-to-date investment ideas and strategies based on latest market developments, and clients retain full discretion on investment decisions, UBS said.