UBS significantly reduced its global workforce in Q4 2023, with a total reduction of 4,336 employees, bringing the count to 138,462. This workforce reduction led to a 7% decrease in personnel expenses, down to $7.06 billion.

UBS continued to reduce its workforce significantly in the fourth quarter of 2023. According to the quarterly report published by the big bank on Tuesday, including external employees, the number of employees worldwide fell by 4336 to 138,462 compared to the end of the third quarter.

According to the UBS figures, the number of internal employees fell by 3139 to 112,849 (full-time equivalents) in the three months under review. The big bank also employed 25,619 external staff (minus 1198) at the end of 2023.

Lower Personnel Expenses and Expensive System Change

The decline in the number of employees is also reflected in the combined bank’s personnel expenses: these fell to 7.06 billion in the final quarter of 2023, which corresponds to a decline of 7 percent compared to the third quarter.

Meanwhile, variable compensation for financial advisors in the USA rose by 2 percent to 1.18 billion dollars. According to a UBS spokesperson, the salary model in the USA is strongly geared towards such salary components. The bank will disclose how the total bonuses for UBS staff have developed when the publication of the annual report in March.

Change in Employee Benefits

In addition to the reduction in the number of employees, personnel expenses were also influenced by payments to discourage employees from changing jobs and compensation for the termination of employment. In addition, there were salary adjustments and higher variable salary components as well as exchange rate effects, and the adjustments of Credit Suisse processes to the UBS system of variable compensation also cost money.

UBS had to absorb higher expenses for employee benefits (USD +375 million). However, the significant cost increase was primarily due to the adjustment of the pension model of Credit Suisse (Switzerland) to that of UBS. For UBS, this led to an increase in pension obligations and consequently to a one-off pre-tax loss of USD 245 million (CHF 207 million) in the fourth quarter.

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