Group revenues at UBS came in at $14.2 billion for the three months to March, up 13% year-on-year (YoY). Net profit reached $3 billion, up 80%, beating an LSEG consensus of $2.8 billion. Invested assets hit a record $6.9 trillion. The reported cost/income ratio improved to 72.5% (from 82.2% a year earlier). But something is still not right. Especially in the U.S.
UBS is not losing revenue in 2026. But something is plainly wrong, because a bank posting those numbers should not be among the more nervously watched names in European banking.
Is the Credit Suisse absorption still diverting focus from wealth management? Has investment banking yet to find its footing? Are the bank’s AI tools delivering efficiency without yet offsetting softer pockets of revenue? Or is the sharper, more precise question this: why, amid solid group numbers, does selective pressure in the United States continue to cloud the picture of the world’s largest wealth manager by total assets under management (AUM)?
$14.1 Billion Left U.S. Wealth in One Quarter
The clearest pressure remains U.S. wealth management. In the fourth quarter of 2025, the Americas recorded a $14.1 billion net new asset outflow, contributing to a full-year net outflow of $6 billion in the region. Stronger performance earlier in the year (especially in Asia/EMEA/Switzerland globally) helped cushion the Americas weakness, but the region still ended the year in negative territory overall. The $14.1B Q4 figure was the standout negative that dragged the annual Americas number into the red.
Nearly 200 financial advisers departed over the preceding twelve months, taking client assets to rivals including Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Charles Schwab and RBC.
Chief Financial Officer Todd Tuckner acknowledged the shortfall on the February earnings call: “We’re certainly not satisfied with the net movement we’ve seen around our advisers.” He warned of further net-new-money headwinds in the first half of 2026 even while projecting that full-year U.S. flows would turn positive overall.
By the first quarter of 2026, the numbers improved. Global Wealth Management attracted $37 billion in net new assets, including a $5.3 billion inflow in the Americas that marked a clear turnaround. Group net profit reached $3 billion, up 80% year-on-year (YoY), while total revenues rose 13.4% to $14.24 billion. Investment Bank revenues climbed 27%, driven by a record performance in Global Markets.
UBS Cuts 1,200 Poland Jobs as Ermotti Warns of AI Job Losses
UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti stood at Zurich’s Point Zero Forum last month and offered a careful assessment of Switzerland’s capital rules debate. Lawmakers, he said, would weigh financial stability against competitiveness. “The political process and the parliament will focus with cool heads, less emotion around what needs to be done to achieve financial stability, but also competitiveness,” Ermotti noted, adding that without competitiveness “we will not maintain Switzerland as a global and vibrant financial centre in the world.”
He also turned to artificial intelligence (AI), observing that UBS already runs hundreds of AI agents and applications. “Let’s be honest – some of the jobs that we have in banking and finance will probably disappear, or you’re going to need fewer people to do the same job,” he said. “If you don’t grow as an economy, if you don’t grow as an organization, you won’t be able to recreate jobs.”
The remarks landed in a curiously muted year. Outside the usual earnings windows, UBS has drawn relatively little sustained attention in 2026. Especially in markets such as Poland, where the bank is closing its Warsaw office and cutting roughly 1,200 roles by year-end as part of Credit Suisse integration.
UBS’s U.S. Rebound Is Not Fixed Yet
Yet the earlier outflows and adviser losses have left a residual mark. Morgan Stanley analyst Giulia Miotto wrote that “the market will want to see a change in trend in U.S. flows to gain confidence in the turnaround in this division,” adding that such a shift was unlikely before the third quarter. KBW’s Thomas Hallett took a more direct stance, opining that U.S. wealth performance “remains a key concern to investors” and “there is no quick fix for the ongoing issues in the U.S. wealth management business.”
UBS has targeted a 15% pre-tax margin in the U.S. wealth division for 2026, up from 13% the prior year. Still well below the over 30% margins it earns in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Ermotti himself lent voice to the challenge without soft edges at a Miami conference: “We can’t fix that issue of restoring pre-tax profit margins by being overly popular with people that are not growing their businesses.”
Credit Suisse Still Consumes Management Attention
The integration of Credit Suisse continues to shape both costs and narrative. By the first quarter of 2026, UBS had delivered cumulative cost savings of $11.5 billion and completed the migration of all Swiss-booked client accounts. Management still expects to substantially finish the work by year-end. The process has, however, required repeated restructuring, including the Polish reductions, and has kept capital requirements under intense political scrutiny in Bern.
Those capital deliberations remain unfinished. Higher requirements could constrain returns and limit the scope for the share buybacks UBS has already accelerated. The distraction argument therefore carries weight: management attention spent on systems migration, cost synergies and regulatory lobbying is attention not fully available for aggressive growth in the United States or for further refining the investment-banking franchise.
Investment Banking Is Up 27%. AI Is Still a Cost Story
Investment banking, far from remaining a chronic underperformer, has been a bright spot. The 27% revenue increase in the first quarter and record Global Markets results suggest the division is benefiting from market volatility and from the broader platform created by the Credit Suisse combination. Assertions that UBS has yet to master investment banking sit uneasily beside the numbers.
AI adoption is real but still early in its revenue impact. Hundreds of agents and applications are already in production, yet Ermotti’s own remarks underline the technology’s dual nature: efficiency gains that reduce headcount in some roles, offset only if the overall franchise grows fast enough to redeploy talent. In a year of selective outflows and integration noise, that growth has not been uniform.
UBS Is Growing, but the Turnaround Is Unfinished
UBS is not, in aggregate, losing revenue in 2026. Group top-line and profit figures point the other way. The better news flow, the residual U.S. wealth pressures, the ongoing integration costs and the capital overhang nevertheless create a more nuanced picture. The bank is attempting a multi-year turnaround under political and competitive pressures few global wealth managers face to the same degree.
The first-quarter rebound in the Americas was encouraging. But one strong quarter does not make a turnaround. UBS must still retain advisers, deliver the remaining Credit Suisse savings on schedule and prove that its investment in AI can produce more than internal efficiencies.
If it succeeds, the relative silence surrounding the bank in 2026 will look like a transitional lull. If it does not, that silence may prove to have been an early warning that UBS’s post-rescue ambitions were beginning to lose momentum.
Author: Richardson Chinonyerem
The editorial team at #DisruptionBanking has taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organisations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this article. This article is most definitely not financial advice.
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