UBS points to financial adviser hiring in reporting results

UBS Group CEO Ralph Hamers

The bank added that it had a 'strong quarter' in financial adviser recruitment in the Americas but gave no details in its earnings information.

As it continues to move forward after the Labor Day weekend collapse of its $1.4 billion deal to acquire U.S. robo-adviser Wealthfront, UBS Group’s global wealth management business on Tuesday morning reported it was focused on hiring financial advisers against a backdrop of a 4% decline of total revenues in the third quarter to almost $4.8 billion when compared to the same period last year.

That single digit decline in revenue at UBS’ wealth management business is occurring against a bad year for stocks; the S&P 500 index for the year was down 20% through early trading on Tuesday morning.

Operating profits for the quarter at UBS global wealth management were nearly $1.5 billion for the quarter.

The firm is once again publicly pushing a strategy of selectively hiring financial advisers who work with the wealthiest clients. That’s a departure from the move it made five years ago, when UBS and its wirehouse competitors decided to rein in mass recruiting, focus on internal growth and reduce expenses incurred when paying healthy bonuses to hire financial advisers.

“In the U.S., we’re driving scale and productivity, improving profit before tax margins and positioning our business for future growth, all supported by strong adviser hiring,” said UBS Group CEO Ralph Hamers in a statement.

In the wealth management business in the Americas, UBS said it reeled in net new fee-generating assets of $4 billion. It also reported positive momentum in its separately managed account offering, which contributed $5 billion in net new money.

The bank added that it had a “strong quarter” in financial adviser recruiting in the Americas but gave no details or specifics about third-quarter recruits in its earnings information.

UBS financial adviser head count was 6,257 in the Americas at the end of September, or just about flat with the same period last year when the firm reported 6,266 advisers in the region.