UBS Call Center Rings New Management

Digitalization in banking is placing new demands on telephone advice. UBS is restructuring its Swiss call centers under new management.

UBS Switzerland is realigning its Swiss contact center (CCS), according to an internal letter to employees, as the bank responds to the strong increase of remote services in the banking business.

According to the memo, UBS’s internal bank call centers in Zurich, Basel, French-speaking Switzerland, and Ticino will adopt agile working methods geared even more closely to customer needs. As the memo suggests, the focus is expanding beyond traditional retail customers to include corporate customers. The credit card business operates its own contact points.

Work is only just beginning, according to sources close to Switzerland’s largest bank. While it appears no job cuts are planned, there will be a change at the top of the CCS unit, which employs more than 400 people throughout Switzerland.

Alfons Livers, the current head of the unit, will hand over responsibility for the CCS unit to Kaja Bertoli on October 1. She will drive a new direction. Livers will help Bertoli with the transition phase and will take on a new role within UBS starting in 2023.

In her new role, Bertoli, reports to Simone Westerfeld, head of UBS Private Clients, as well as to operational Switzerland head (COO) Sabine Magri. She will also be in close communication with Alain Conte, co-head of the Swiss corporate banking business, with reporting lines also reflecting the broader focus of UBS’s call centers.

In addition, Stephan Schwyter becomes the new operational head of CCS, reporting to Bertoli.

The latter most recently worked as head of strategy & business development (S&BD) at UBS Switzerland, having joined the bank in 2012. Her previous post is still open. Like Bertoli, Schwyter has worked in S&BD in an eleven-year career at the bank.