UBS makes AI skills a hiring requirement for junior investment bankers: report
Key Points
- UBS requires 2027 graduates and interns in banking and markets to demonstrate AI proficiency
- The rule sits alongside the existing requirement of a 2.1 degree
- UBS has already built AI avatars of around 35 analysts to deliver client videos
- Morgan Stanley forecasts more than 200,000 European banking jobs at risk by 2030
- McKinsey says banks are cutting junior analyst classes by up to two-thirds
UBS is requiring graduates and interns joining its global banking and markets divisions in 2027 to show they can use AI to improve outcomes and efficiency, the Financial Times reported on Sunday (6 September).
The FT, citing people familiar with the matter, said the stipulation sits alongside traditional entry criteria such as being on track for a 2.1 undergraduate degree, making UBS one of the first major financial institutions to explicitly require AI literacy from junior bankers.
The Swiss bank has spent the past 18 months pushing AI into work that analysts previously did themselves. UBS built virtual versions of around 35 of its 720 research analysts using models from OpenAI and Synthesia, with the avatars delivering short video briefings to clients.
The bank said it wanted to lift video output from around 1,000 pieces a year to as many as 5,000, and a spokesperson told Fortune that analysts on the road had generated, approved and published avatar videos from their research notes while travelling.
The new hiring rule arrives as European lenders plan deep cuts to headcount. Morgan Stanley analysts estimated in January that Europe’s banking industry could lose more than 200,000 jobs by 2030 as institutions adopt AI and close branches, equivalent to around 10% of the workforce at the region’s 35 largest banks.
The analysts expected the heaviest losses in central services teams covering back-office and middle-office roles, risk management and compliance, and they pointed to projected efficiency gains of 30% from AI and digitisation.
Graduate intakes have already started shrinking on Wall Street and across banking. Debasish Patnaik, Senior Partner and Leader of McKinsey’s QuantumBlack AI arm, told Fortune in June that banks were cutting junior analyst classes by as much as two-thirds while drawing roughly 62% of their AI talent from those same cohorts.
“Banking is an apprenticeship business. Today’s junior analysts become tomorrow’s managing directors,” said Patnaik.
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said in December that AI would eliminate jobs, and Citigroup Chief Executive Jane Fraser told staff some roles would no longer be required.
Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon said hiring straight out of university could contract slightly over the next few years as AI changes the talent mix, though the firm still expects to take on thousands of interns and graduates.
