Customers

UBS

"If you want to manage by metrics, you need the appropriate systems. We decided in favor of market leader Business Objects, as we needed a powerful query and reporting tool that can handle our KPIs and metrics, as well as generate reports using large volumes of UBS data."

Thierry Schafflützel
head of corporate accounting
UBS Wealth Management & Business Banking

Challenge

One of the top 10 investment banking and securities firms in the world, UBS is a world leader in financial services and wealth management. It specializes in retail and commercial banking and, like most modern banks, relies on financial metrics to make business decisions.

The problem for UBS, however, was that its managers needed faster access to information. The existing accounting and management information systems, having grown over the past decades, had reached their limits and, in most cases, the end of their life cycles. UBS needed a state-of-the-art reporting system to track key performance indicators (KPIs) for its strategic and operational business management. These KPIs include monitoring of return on assets, total client assets, and net new money.

Approach

For many banks, it's not a question of knowing when to replace existing systems, but rather what to replace them with. To help sustain its market strength and continued growth, UBS sought an advanced accounting and reporting system that could meet regulatory (IAS, US GAAP, SOX, and Basel II) and internal (on client, product, and profit center levels) reporting requirements.

UBS chose Business Objects, the market leader in enterprise reporting, to work with consultants from Accenture in the joint implementation of a new initiative called GEAR- Global Environment for Accounting & Reporting. The goal was to integrate the bank's separate main systems for financial and management accounting. To achieve this, UBS needed to centralize all of its financial transactions using a single accounting logic, stored in one accounting general ledger and accessible/distributable in all relevant formats for external and internal reporting. And UBS further extended the accounting logic to meet the stringent new Basel II Accord and produce all necessary risk reporting associated with the accord.

Results

Business Objects, through partnering with UBS, helped ensure the successful implementation of GEAR. In fact, this integrated reporting system is one of the largest and most visible - externally and internally - accounting systems ever implemented in the financial services industry.

Since the system's implementation, UBS can now store and process 20 to 30 million entries per day. Every day beginning at 6 p.m., nearly 170 different data sources transfer information into the central data warehouse. Processing takes place overnight and ready-to-use reports (e.g., profit center reports) are available to managers by 7 a.m. This way, the bank can manage its business based on the most up-to-date figures. Standardized reports, for example, can show whether commission business meets expectations or if increases in performance are due to market fluctuations or actual influx of net new money.

UBS managers now have access to rich, reliable information that gives them one version of the truth on their key clients, products, and businesses. The many benefits of the new accounting and reporting system include:

Not only is in-depth financial information on customers and products now quickly available to UBS managers, but these managers can also easily drill down on key data to strengthen the bank's market positioning and meet targeted revenue goals. The new accounting and reporting system provides data in a consistent and adjusted format, leaving UBS well prepared for the future.

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