Revisions made by UBS pay 10,000 workers

The Swiss bank UBS has revised its remuneration policy for 10,000 employees in order to reduce the uncertainties regarding bonuses and the time that managers spend on their badignment.

Employees working in the bank's "business center" – which includes human resources, marketing and communications staff – will no longer receive a variable bonus, the bank confirmed on Sunday.

Instead, they will receive fixed annual bonuses equivalent to about half of their monthly salary. Staff earning between 50,000 and 100,000 Swiss francs are affected by the change.

Some employees will also receive higher fixed salaries to ensure that their overall compensation does not decline as a result of the new policy, which was first reported by the Swiss newspaper Sonntagszeitung.

A spokesman said that UBS wanted to move from variable bonuses to a system that emphasizes transparency and "reducing uncertainty."

He added that this "would eliminate the disadvantages in case of poor performance of the group, while retaining the benefits in case of strong performance."

The change will also mean that managers will have to spend less time deciding how bonuses will be spent, which will allow them to focus on "development opportunities" for their teams, the spokesman said.

"We continue to focus on performance pay and recognize it through pay increases, promotion decisions and development opportunities," he added.

UBS, which said last month that its badet management and wealth management clients withdrew $ 13 billion from the bank in the last quarter of 2018, said the move was not an attempt to reduce costs.

UBS investment bank reported fourth-quarter loss of $ 47 million compared to last year's profit of $ 46 million due to "difficult conditions" in credit and trading activities. shares.

However, the bank's pre-tax earnings for 2018 increased by 19% to $ 6.4 billion, due to the increase in wealth management revenues in the first three quarters of the year, as well as reduction of restructuring and litigation costs.

UBS said it was not considering extending the new compensation policy to other parts of the bank.