UBS Makes Moves to Diversify Its Workforce

News May 23, 2018 at 11:01 AM
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As the country's demographics continue to shift, the need for wealth management services for ethnically diverse individuals will only continue to grow.

In an effort to make its workforce more reflective of this changing client base, UBS has partnered with the diversity recruitment and career advancement platform Jopwell.

"Jopwell is a career advancement platform for black, Latino, Hispanic and Native American students and professionals," Jopwell CEO Porter Braswell explained to ThinkAdvisor. "We have a large, engaged community of students and professionals on one side and, through our technology, we connect them with professional opportunities on the other side at the organizations where Jopwell has relationships."

UBS is the first wealth manager to partner with a diversity recruitment and career advancement platform like Jopwell to increase its abilities to source and recruit top-tier diverse candidates

As Braswell notes, this shows that UBS knows that the demographics of America are changing. White people are expected to make up less than half the U.S. population by 2045, the Brookings Institution says, citing Census data.

"With this growing population, wealth is changing hands in this country as well," Braswell said. "To the credit of UBS, to think years ahead … they have to understand — which they do — that demographics are shifting. You're going to need to have a workforce that is inclusive of what this country looks like."

UBS also recognizes that hiring diverse professionals who intimately understand the needs and communities of a changing client base is crucial to succeeding as a business.

According to Emily de la Reguera, head of next generation advisor development at UBS, the firm is focused on how to best serve its clients in the long term.

"When you think about the intergenerational wealth transfer that's happening and the rise in demographics with people of color, it's something to take note of," de la Reguera told ThinkAdvisor. "I'm really proud of UBS for being a leader in this space and forming this partnership with Jopwell and thinking about it across wealth management."

UBS also officially launched a Wealth Manager Development Program — a comprehensive initiative in partnership with Jopwell — to increase the firm's ability to source, team and train the next generation of top financial advisors. The goal of this new program is to also provide a talent pool of the best qualified, young, diverse financial professionals to better serve the next generation of clients.

The Wealth Manager Development Program is one of UBS' next gen advisor programs, which de la Reguera oversees.

"What we're really focused on across all of our next-gen advisor programs is this goal of attracting, developing and retaining the next generation of financial advisors. And integrating them on the team," she said.

The development program also includes a new and improved three-year training program with upfront onsite training and divisional training that focuses on client acquisition and Private Wealth Management training.

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