Also from my side, it's a pleasure to have our next speaker up. I think it's one of the most intellectually interesting equity stories out there. We've got the Chief Financial Officer of UBS, Todd Tuckner. Todd, thank you very much for joining us today. As usual, we keep this into sort of a formal Q&A. We'll go through some initial remarks, and then we'll open up for questions from the audience. A lot has happened in the last 12 months or so. To start with, maybe you can talk us through the process and the latest developments that you've seen regarding the capital proposal that was presented by the Swiss Federal Council. The public consultation is still ongoing. Are you going to present your position before the end of the September deadline?
Yeah, thanks, Antonio. Great to be here. Yes, sir, as you say, the consultation process is ongoing through the end of September, and it's the consultation process regarding the ordinance proposals, mainly having to do with DTAs and software. We do intend to publish our formal comments before the end of the month and publish them at the same time on our website. Our objective in the comments really is to be quite factual and to talk about the impact and the consequences if the proposals were to be adopted as they're currently drafted. We're also assessing whether and in what forum we might take questions from analysts and the media in connection with our formal submission. I would also comment, you asked about the process. The process is on a split track, and just yesterday, the Swiss government confirmed that it would stay on a split track.
What I mean by that is the ordinance proposals, those rules that address DTAs and software in particular, in terms of the capital around them, those rules will be finalized by the Swiss Federal Council, within the administration. We expect, after the comments are received by the government and assessed, we would expect that the rules then are issued whether later this year, but much more likely early to mid next year. We would expect that the earliest they would take effect on the ordinance side is 2027. We also think it's reasonable to expect a phase-in period on the ordinance proposals, but of course, the Swiss Federal Council will need to confirm that. On the other side, you have the legislative proposals that really have to do with the capital backing of foreign subsidiary investments. Clear, that's going to go through the parliamentary process, which will be more complicated.
We understand that there'll be a consultation process specifically on those rules that will be launched before the end of the month by the government. There'll be a separate consultation process running on that. We don't expect those rules to take effect before 2028, and the phase-in period, at least as articulated by the government when they issued their proposals in June, can extend to at least six years, if not further out.
No, that's very clear. We've talked about the process. UBS was asked to hold as much as $24 billion in additional capital at the parent bank, which is, of course, a significant cost. I mean, a lose-lose scenario for yourself and Switzerland. Maybe talk us through the implications that these capital measures will have for a GC business like yours.
Yes, for sure, Antonio, as you say, the $24 billion that has been, you know, is a function of the proposals we view as being excessive. Also, that has to be, you know, looked at in the context of the $18 billion of additional capital that we're already addressing as part of the Credit Suisse acquisition. It creates, all told, a factual minimum capital requirement for us that would be 50% above the average regulatory floor for G-SIBs. We already believe that the Swiss capital regime is among the world's most stringent, having also, among other things, the government having accelerated the implementation of Basel III final beginning of this year. By the way, within that, putting some provisions in there that are more conservative than we think other jurisdictions, even when they eventually get around to Basel III, will put in.
The other point I think that's worth making is that we also see the proposals as failing to meet the Swiss government's stated objectives of being targeted, particularly around Credit Suisse's failings around the parent bank. If you look at the proposals, they particularly bite on DTAs and software at group level. We don't see how they're targeted. Another stated objective was to be internationally aligned, and the treatment proposed for deferred tax assets arising from temporary difference, capitalized software, are not aligned with jurisdictions around the world. You asked about sort of the consequences for us. If the rules were finalized as they're currently drafted, we think we'd be a pronounced outlier versus peers from a capital perspective, and it really would render any comparison to minimum requirements across G-SIBs as meaningless. Ultimately, it would just impede on our return competitiveness.
No, thanks for that. I mean, that was, of course, for a preview of what's to come because we were looking forward to the event where you formalize your views further. Maybe just to wrap things up on the capital point, the market is obviously very keen to hear what you think you can do to reduce the impact of some of these proposed measures on both your capital position and businesses.
Naturally, understood, Antonio. It's important to state that we are looking at every option made available to us. For sure, all response measures are being considered, including the costs and the trade-offs of each. We are looking at this thoroughly. This said, it's clearly too early to speculate as to how we would respond, particularly as these rules are still very much in the formative stages, and there's still a lot of debate around the shape. Until we have more visibility around the shape and timing of the rules, it would be premature for us to talk about how we might respond. Our investors understand that.
Makes sense. Your commitment to stakeholders hasn't really changed throughout, and you're making, I think, very strong progress in delivering on your objectives. I think this should not be taken for granted, given the size of the integration. You're almost through the plan, and you provide the market with an update in Q4. Where would you say the business is delivering better so far, and where do you think you need to do a little bit more versus your projections?
Yeah, so thanks, Antonio, for bringing up, you know, on the integration side. First, let me just comment on that, that all the KPIs that we've set for the integration, you know, we think we're, you know, going to meet or beat them all when we sunset integration at the end of 2026. Just this weekend, we successfully migrated a number of former Credit Suisse clients onto the UBS platform in Switzerland, now having transferred half of a million or so client files that we will have transferred by early next year. We continue to make progress in de-risking our non-core unit, which, you know, leads to releasing capital, saving costs, and also, you know, we're settling litigation matters. We're also hard at work in streamlining the legal entity structure that we inherited from Credit Suisse, literally hundreds of entities. In doing so, we're simplifying the organizational structure.
We're taking out costs, and that's all supporting our tax planning. From a business standpoint, I would say, without exception, all of our businesses have benefited from the acquisition of Credit Suisse in terms of integrating the value creative parts of Credit Suisse. It's helped them to increase scale, to enhance their capabilities, and to broaden their geographical coverage. Now, as we see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the integration, the businesses are very focused on investing for growth.
We'll have a chance to talk a little bit more about the business units in more detail, but maybe one follow-up on that integration part. When I think of integration, of course, I associate that with you achieving cost synergies and efficiency gains, and that's coming through. When I think about integration, I think about the core banking system, which is really at the heart of any bank's IT infrastructure. That comes with a large share of integration risk inevitably. You've been migrating something like a million clients and 95 petabytes of data, which is a ridiculous amount of a billion of A4 pages. If I think of one petabyte, it's 500 billion of A4 pages, just for the context. This last quarter alone, you've transferred something like a third of your Swiss clients that you've targeted.
Now a half as of this weekend.
Now a half, there you go. Maybe you can give us a little bit more of an update on where this process stands. Obviously, the market is expecting large cost savings coming through.
Yeah, for sure. We've been working towards $13 billion gross cost save by the end of 2026, as well as an underlying cost-income ratio below 70%. Each quarter, I come out and report on our progress against those targets. The client migration work is an important catalyst. De-risking non-core, as I mentioned, has been and is a big catalyst to cost saves. You mentioned the tech piece. Tech decommissioning is, for us, the biggest capacity unlock. For us, the Swiss platform is by far the biggest. As you mentioned, once the client migration is complete early next year, we get at the hard work of decommissioning. What I mean by decommissioning is you take the platform down, but that also means you take down software applications. You get to shutter hardware data centers, and you unlock a lot of staff capacity.
By the end of 2026, we will have been done with the decommissioning of the Swiss platform, and that will unlock significant cost saves, particularly for Global Wealth Management and our Personal and Corporate Banking business in Switzerland.
Maybe let's move on to talk about the business units. We can start with, I think, the investment banking business. I mean, capital markets seem to be back. What's the outlook as you look ahead for your IB?
The IB is a great example of a business that has benefited from the Credit Suisse acquisition in terms of taking on the value creative parts. You see that across markets and banking, but also including research. The IB as well has made significant investments in capabilities, technology, and talent, and that's paying off. We have a really top-flight IB in APAC, in the EU, in the UK, and in Switzerland. We've really strengthened our presence in the Americas. The fact that the IB is very focused on supporting our global wealth management clients has really been a differentiator in terms of revenue generation as well. In terms of outlook, markets continue to perform well, notwithstanding more normalized levels of activity and volatility in quarter to date, in particular versus the prior year quarter, which for us was, by the way, a record third quarter for the investment bank.
In banking, we're tracking ahead of the global fee pool, which is up around 15% year on year, and owing to more positive market sentiment, certainly more so than we've seen in the first half of 2025.
That's very good. Maybe a word on the Swiss business, because obviously Switzerland lies on a flat curve with SARON rates at zero, which is possibly the worst outcome for European C profitability, not high enough to preserve deposit margins and not low enough to sustain your non-NII, your loan origination. The good news is that, of course, it can get much worse than that. You've been able to defend profitability despite these micro headwinds. What's the outlook for your P&C business going forward?
Yeah, look, the Swiss business has been remarkably resilient when you consider the interest rate environment you mentioned, but also economic sluggishness in Switzerland and a number of the neighboring export markets. Also, the business has been appropriately focused on the client migration that we have been talking about, which adds an element of distraction to the business and to management. Add on top of that the fact that the business has had to inherit a significant credit book from Credit Suisse, which has thrown off more than its fair share of credit loss expense since we inherited it. We've been working through that backbook. By the end of next year, we should really see the credit loss expenses relating to the Credit Suisse exposures really, really tapering.
That said, of course, as the backbook risk tapers, we're now dealing with tariffs, which we, of course, have to actively manage and monitor as well. In terms of the outlook, the way I think about this is by early next year, and let's see if the macro backdrop in Switzerland improves. In any event, the migration is going to be done so the business could be on their front foot with their enlarged client base on one platform and really focus on driving productivity, efficiency, and ultimately growth. You mentioned NII, which is, as you say, Antonio, has troughed, which is to say that if rates go up or down from here, it will benefit NII. Of course, we have to continue to actively, as I said, manage and monitor the credit risk situation, not least given the ongoing tariff situation.
Yeah, the tariffs were clearly a surprise. Maybe we'll talk about that later, but we can move on to discuss wealth, which is sort of over 50% of your group revenues. Maybe let's start with a big picture question first. I mean, what opportunities and challenges do you see ahead for the wealth management industry?
That's a great question. I'm glad you bring up trends in wealth because that's obviously something we're very focused on. I would say the trends in wealth are really threefold that we're seeing across the industry. First, I'd bucket together wealth migration, market diversification, and multi-shoring. That's invited by geopolitical issues, market dynamics, but also tax planning, and also lifestyle and mobility. We're clearly seeing those things, particularly for our wealthiest clients. The other trend I'd say that's quite apparent is intergenerational wealth transfer, particularly when you consider the stunning amount of accumulated wealth by investors who are at least 75 years of age. I guess the third one I would identify is sort of next-gen wealth tech digital assets for the digital savvy, and with it, the democratization of investment products.
If you step back and consider those trends, they offer tremendous upside for incumbents, but also very significant risks because they also invite significant upside for new entrants, new players, disruptors, digital disruptors. The upside is great. The downside is equally as great, I would say. At UBS in Global Wealth, we get what's at stake for sure. We are very focused on investing to leverage the trends and reap the upside, but also very clear to manage our downside risks.
Very clear. Maybe let's move on to discuss the sort of the U.S., which is your single largest wealth market. You've been making progress when it comes to pre-tax profit margin this last quarter. What do you see as the sort of key drivers of U.S. growth from now on? Maybe, if I may, to add, the vision that you and Sergio have of UBS is, of course, a business where the global platform is a point of strength and not vice versa. However, increasingly, the market is wondering, also on the back of the capital discussions, if you're the best owner of that U.S. business. What's your take on that?
Yeah, maybe let's unpack that complex question about the U.S. Thanks for recognizing the profit improvement. Look, I've said since we laid out the various elements that we need to improve upon in order to narrow the pre-tax margin gap with peers, we have to do all of them well, improve on all of the elements that I laid out most recently in detail in our investor update in 4Q. Without there being one particular one that we have to do better than the rest, we have to chip away at all the elements. We're doing that and we're making progress. If there were one differentiator, though, that I would call out for the wealthy U.S. business, it is banking penetration. If you look at our NII as a percentage of total revenues, we're around 10% away from our peer set average.
That ultimately is such a huge driver of pre-tax margin growth, improving NII. Why is that? Just because under the wirehouse model, NII is compensable at a lower level to the advisors than some of the other items of income. Getting banking right is super important. We get that. We understand that. We're investing a lot in our banking capabilities. Securing the national charter is a big step on that journey. You mentioned sort of global connectivity, which I believe is a strategic advantage for UBS. The fact that we offer multi-shoring capabilities where we can seamlessly offer clients who want to book across multiple jurisdictions. I do believe that is an important element for us and offers an important strategic advantage, not least given the secular trends I mentioned before, including the acceleration of wealth mobility. Lastly, I'd say the U.S. is the biggest wealth market in the world.
As a result, it is fundamental to our growth strategy. It is also foundational to what makes us special, having a truly global wealth offering worldwide. I'm confident that we will continue to improve pre-tax margins along with our ambition and, over time, continue to invest in the business and narrow the gap versus peers.
Thanks for that. Very good to hear. I think you made some interesting points. If I look at sort of Asia, which is your wealth market, which is facing, you know, it's your engine, really, with $750 billion of U.S. dollar invested assets, there's been positive momentum in APAC and macro and global trade has been, you know, a driver of investor sentiment. What are you seeing on the ground in terms of activity levels?
Yeah, continue to see very good client momentum in Asia. Markets are doing well, if I summarize that across that massive geography, but in general, there's a lot of positive momentum. In terms of how we think about this going forward, we intend to leverage our number one wealth business in APAC to accelerate growth. How are we thinking about this? We want to expand beyond the traditional markets of unrivaled strength for us, Hong Kong and Singapore, and expand into strategic growth markets: Taiwan, India, Australia, also onshore China. We want to penetrate those markets a few ways. One, we want to clearly improve the share of wallet that we have with clients. Secondly, we want to accelerate strategic partnerships. We announced one recently in India. We have one in Japan. Those strategic partnerships are quite important to get a foothold in markets where we are less dominant.
Third, I would say it's important that we're going to ramp up impact hiring of client advisors across these markets.
Right here. All right, we've got about 15 minutes to go. I'm going to ask you one last question, and then we'll test the audience to see if there are any questions from the floor. We've obviously talked about the capital debate, and I think you've made it very clear that you remain committed to deliver shareholder distribution for this year. How should we think about the way you deploy the capital you generate or repatriate going forward between, especially sort of distribution, double leverage, or any other potential use? Maybe you can talk about those options a bit further.
Sure. Antonio, as you know, we're a highly capital-generative firm. If you think about before Credit Suisse, before the acquisition, the way we thought about it was we intended to return pre-Credit Suisse levels of shareholder returns by 2026. The assumptions that we made in doing that were that we were going to upstream earnings from subsidiaries and use those to fund capital returns and therefore maintain an equity double leverage ratio where we were pre-Credit Suisse of around 100%. Until we have more visibility on the shape and timing of the capital rules and as this debate takes shape, that remains our sort of ingoing assumption for how we would fund capital returns going forward.
Thanks, Todd. All right, we're going to now open up for questions from the audience. If you want to ask one for Todd, please raise your hand. I see one there in the middle. Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you. Two questions, please. The first one, historically strong investment banking activity has been a good driver of net new money growth in the wealth management business. Is there any reason why this cycle, the dynamic there should be any different to what happened in the past? The second question is in the U.S. wealth management business. Could you talk a little bit about your latest thinking on broadening the client acquisition funnel, perhaps reducing the dependency on the relationship managers there and finding other ways to bring people into the hopper?
Yeah. In terms of net new asset growth, we've had an objective for both 2024 and 2025 of $100 billion in net new assets. We're on track in 2025. In 2024, we broadly met that objective. In 2025, we're on track to meet that objective. We have said we intend to grow net new assets to $200 billion by 2028. From 2026 to 2028 now, we should see more accretion around that. The reason 2024 and 2025 were, there were puts and takes, was really having to do with the Credit Suisse acquisition. We knew that we had to do a whole series of balance sheet optimization work. We had to look at the credit exposures that we had as they were maturing. We had to ensure that we were using the balance sheet appropriately and efficiently.
As I have been reporting the last several quarters, we had a big win-back campaign after Credit Suisse where there was an outflow of near $200 billion of deposits. It was important to bring back and clearly stabilize the deposit base. As those assets have started to mature, our liabilities, of course, as they started to mature, in many cases, we had to manage keeping those maturing deposits on our platform as opposed to seeing clients move to other banks in order to get similar rate levels, just given we were paying attractive levels that were above where we would normally pay once things had stabilized. There were a number of competing factors that sought to offset the growth and momentum that we had in net new assets.
As we continue to make progress on the integration, we see less and less of that as a headwind and therefore want to get to this $200 billion level, which would be around 4% net new asset growth by 2028. In terms of feeder channels, it's an excellent question and something we focus on. Clearly, at the moment for us, the most predominant feeder channel we have or acquisition channel funnel, as you say, are the advisors themselves. Ensuring that we're able to attract advisors, but to also incentivize our current bench of advisors to grow is super important. We've been making a lot of efforts and inroads to ensure that that happens. Banking is another important feeder channel and something I mentioned we have to improve upon.
The more that the relationship gets institutionalized and broadens, the better in terms of being able to attract more and more assets and keep the relationship sticky, and that's important. Workplace wealth is another area where we're significantly investing. We believe that we are particularly well positioned to grow that as an asset channel. Where clients are, they have, say, comp plans that vest, and then where the administrator over those comp plans, and then we're able to advise on those vested share awards and potentially take on new clients that way and bring in new assets under management. Those are all important things that we're very focused on to improve the acquisition funnel and to continue to ensure that overall we're able to meet our net new asset growth target of $200 billion by 2028.
Thank you. Maybe I'll follow up on Ian's question, actually, because if I look at your disclosure, I think a sizable number of advisors seem to have left this year, especially mainly out of the U.S. Is this something we should worry about?
Look, first of all, when you look at equity valuation levels, when they're running at all-time highs, that's always a big catalyst for movement of advisors across firms. We're seeing that, elevated levels across the street as advisors seek to monetize their books of business. We're seeing that at our own shop as well. Also, some of the changes that we introduced at the end of last year are contributing to some additional movement to other firms and to the independent channel. This said, we're actively recruiting, and we're also seeing more advisors commit to stay and retire at UBS than any time since we introduced that particular program, the retention program, which is working quite well. We're going to work through some of the more elevated levels of attrition that we're seeing across the market and that we're also seeing at our shop as well.
Thank you. Any more questions from the audience for Todd? I think we've probably covered. I've got maybe a couple more, if I may. Just you've touched earlier on sort of U.S. tariffs and the levels for Switzerland, which came, as a big surprise, even a shock, we can say. Can you talk a little bit more about sort of how this is impacting your clients and your business?
I think it's too early to call on that. I mean, and also, of course, to see where ultimately there's the level change is still something to watch. I think general Swiss companies have a fair bit of optionality, and they're pretty resilient in this area, in particular when it comes to U.S. tariffs, because many have manufacturing facilities in the U.S. There might be ways that they can hedge against the significant tariff levels. They also have global access to potentially even redirect some of their sales efforts. It's a particularly resilient set of corporates within the various industries that Switzerland does quite well that could be impacted by tariffs. It's clearly an area that we have to watch.
I mean, if there are prolonged high tariffs over a period, one could reasonably expect that they can have an impact, of course, on the credit health of corporates and ultimately could impact on the credit exposures that a bank like UBS would have.
Now, I realize you present a plan, and I think we should wait for that plan before you provide the market with the full picture around what is the real normal and ambition levels when it comes to net flows. We are approaching the end of the integration process, and every time you speak, you're making a step in the right direction. How far are we to reaching the $200 billion net flow ambition? Do you think that it's still the normalized level that you can sustain going forward?
Yeah, Antonio, as Ian asked, I would just reiterate that we're on track in terms of our 2025 ambition of $100 billion of net new assets. We still maintain as an ambition to grow to $200 billion by 2028. I will come back in the fourth quarter of 2025 or early next year and offer, as part of our investor update, a view on how that trajectory is looking and what are the steps that we're taking and what are the drivers around that. That detail will come.
Thank you. Maybe just one follow-up then, given that we're going to take advantage of you being with us today. You know, can you talk a little bit more about the impact of output floors on the levels of capital that you will have to hold? Are there any other potential mitigations that you can implement?
Yeah, we're currently operating unconstrained by the output floor. Of course, the output floor itself will increase to 72.5% by 2028. We have disclosed that we think, all other things being equal, that the output floor would start to become constraining by 2028. We're hard at work to mitigate the output floor where we can, and we'll continue to update the market on how we're progressing along those mitigation options.
Thank you, Todd. I think that completes my questions. I think we've covered a lot of ground. I want to thank you very much for joining us today, and thanks, everyone, for listening.
Thank you very much.