UBS is moving central front-office positions in its Asset Management division to Poland, marking the first time the bank has relocated client-facing investment roles to the low-cost eastern European hub. Job postings list Krakow and Wroclaw as the locations for roles that were previously based in Zurich, London, and New York.
The move goes beyond the back-office and IT functions that UBS (along with Credit Suisse before the merger) has been shifting to Poland for more than a decade. The bank is now transferring top positions that were historically reserved for its western financial centres.
“It would be more important to move the headquarters out of Zurich so that the left would have less to redistribute,” commented user Mary Amen in an insideparadeplatz blog post as anti-immigrant sentiment continues to rise in Switzerland.
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What The UBS Job Postings Say
UBS recruitment material describes the Krakow and Wroclaw teams as “embedded in front-office workflows” and working “closely with global investment teams across asset classes”. The roles involve direct support for portfolio implementation, mandates and customised client solutions “with exposure across the full investment lifecycle”, the bank states.
One source told Inside Paradeplatz that the build-out of front-office jobs in Poland for UBS Asset Management could be the start of a larger wave, with potentially hundreds of such positions moved from Zurich to Poland.
More recently, the bank has consolidated its Polish operations in Krakow and Wroclaw while closing its Warsaw office as part of a global optimisation programme.
The latest shift suggests that the bank sees Poland not only as a cost-efficient base for support functions but increasingly as a location for core investment roles. According to one insider cited by Inside Paradeplatz, UBS is working towards obtaining its own asset management licence in Poland, which would allow even more central jobs to be relocated from the Zurich headquarters.
“We are talking about tens of billions in assets that UBS will newly manage out of Poland,” the source said.
UBS has not commented in detail on the specific front-office moves. The bank has previously said that its Polish sites in Krakow and Wroclaw will continue to play a central role in its global network, even as it reduces headcount in certain areas as part of post-merger integration.
