Lisa Golia's promotion in March to lead UBS' 5,600-strong U.S. financial advisor workforce was a crowning achievement for an industry veteran who wasn't originally interested in the field. But Golia hasn't had much time to celebrate: She's now at the center of a high-stakes initiative to turn around the business, which has struggled recently with advisor attrition and asset outflows.
In charge of hiring, retention, and compensation, Golia must shore up an advisor corps that lost more than 100 advisors over the past year amid poaching by rival firms. At the same time, she must work to meet its Swiss parent's demand for higher pretax profit margins. In an interview with Barron's Advisor conducted July 22, Golia discusses how she's managing this balancing act. She argues that the company's newly approved U.S. national bank charter will be a game changer. And she describes the pitch she's using to attract advisors to the smallest wirehouse.
How did you get started in the business? I did not think that I would go into financial services, but after college a headhunter sent me to a bunch of places, and Morgan Stanley was where I felt comfortable. I started in 1999 as a sales assistant working for multiple financial advisors. I then went into branch management and was ultimately asked to move to the home office to take other leadership roles. I eventually became head of wealth management strategic services, where I had oversight for all communications internal to our financial advisors, operations aspects of digital, and a lot of the field service organization, and interacted with field leaders. I moved to UBS as the global wealth management COO about 2 1/2 years ago and since March have been head of field management. I grew up in wealth management, grew up within the branch network, always around financial advisors and field leaders.
Can you describe your goals for the growth of the advisor force? The most important measure I use in terms of advisors has to do with helping them grow their business. We've had a multiyear strategy that's all about how we can give our advisors the resources and tools they need to grow their business. The efforts are paying off from a financial perspective. We saw net new assets over $5 billion in the first quarter.
I believe we have a compelling offering because we're very advisor-centric firm with everything we do in terms of prioritizing our investments. We listen to our financial advisors. Obviously, we can't do everything they want, but we prioritize, and then we organize around clients in a way I think others can't.
The first thing we've done is significantly increase our investment over the past few years in technology.
In terms of investment and growth for our ultrahigh-net-worth clients, we created pods of regional specialists: We have estate and tax experts, investment bankers, philanthropy specialists partner with and act as a virtual team for financial advisors when they're interacting with ultrahigh-net-worth clients. This is something we started investing in about a year and a half ago, and it has been very successful. We also invested in making sure we provide differentiated capital markets and advisory services, unique structured capabilities and exclusive investment offerings. That's at the ultrahigh-net-worth level.
We are the premier firm providing sophisticated, customized solutions in the ultra space. That being said, it's also important to us that we invest in the high-net-worth space, which is another growth engine for us. In the past year we built a financial planning desk to help our advisors and our clients provide financial plans. We invested in insurance specialists. There are a lot of other things we're investing in for financial advisors to help them grow their business. AI is another example.
What does your AI initiative look like? We have an organization called Staat -- the Smart Technologies and Advanced Analytics Team -- which consists of AI engineers. We've invested in AI for two things. One is to help advisors gather more wallet share from their existing clients, and the other is to enhance efficiency. AI is going to help our financial advisors boost efficiency and improve client service. Let me give you an example of how we're leveraging AI to get greater wallet share. We have something called the Insights Engine. Before an FA goes on a client meeting, advisors can receive a client briefing document that draws from approximately 500 sources of information. It tells them everything from property listings to client milestones to interest rates on held-away assets. It gives the advisor instant access to far more information that they would otherwise have. We're also looking at agentic AI, creating agents that can help serve financial advisors and their teams do things a little quicker. That could be in the form of moving money. It could be in the form of helping onboard clients more expeditiously.
Another example is CIO research. I believe our research department is second to none. But like every other organization, there's a lot of information for financial advisors to digest. So about a year and a half ago we created something called Ask CIO, which has been a huge hit. It basically gives advisors very quick and detailed access to our research. At the end of the day, the financial advisor and their team are critical, so we need to make sure we give them the tools to do their jobs.
I don't think AI will ever eliminate a financial advisor or their team, but it will make them more efficient so that they can have more time to get more wallet share from their existing clients and new clients. The downstream impact of that is better profitability.
What does UBS' recently approved U.S. national bank charter mean for the wealth management business? At the end of this year we will be piloting, and launching probably in mid-2027, a true checking and savings account. Everyone banks, and now financial advisors will be able to provide offerings on both sides of the balance sheet: investments and true banking capabilities. We've been building the technology for that so that it's state of the art. In addition to that, it's very important for us to do this right, right out of the gate: We want to make sure we have a concierge-like service model for financial advisors and their teams, so that when clients do want to consolidate their assets and move their checking services, there's either a centralized desk that can help them, or the teams will have very modern technology to provide their clients with that service. I think it is going to be a game changer for us because it will allow our financial advisors to have a full offering for their clients.
You're balancing your mandate to recruit more advisors with your focus on improving profitability, so you can't just throw unlimited money at candidates. What is the story you tell them about why they should join the smallest wirehouse? I think we have a really compelling story. Having come from an organization that obviously was much larger, I think the story is that our size enables us to provide differentiated service to advisors and clients, and to go deeper. Here, our financial advisors can be entrepreneurs. We're not dictating from the top down. We're investing. We're giving you a menu of choices, whether it be product offering, whether it be technology.
At the end of the day, this business is all about building relationships. Financial advisors want to know that they have access, and field leaders also want to make sure their voices are heard. From my perspective, we have a unique advantage because of our size. We have the global capabilities, expertise, and insights of a big firm, but can deliver those to clients in a boutique offering. In my opinion, that's our secret sauce. Before I was here I would watch UBS, and I know a lot of financial advisors who are here who used to be at other firms, and I can tell you that the advisors and field leaders here have a voice and are very connected to the decisions we make that impact them. And we're able to do that because of our size. That cuts across everything financial advisors need, whether it be product offering, support, or technology. And we have advisory councils that we work very closely with to make sure that everything we build is with an FA, for an FA.
Do you have a numerical target you can share for advisor force growth? I don't. I don't think it's prudent to manage head by head count.
Can you give some insight about the levers you're using to boost profitability? Well, our profit-before-tax margin is expected to grow from 15% today to 18% by the end of 2028. And we're going to do that in different ways, including building the bank and continuing to invest in a multiyear growth plan. Creating very good service models. Investing in financial planning. Making sure we have a robust product offering. I don't believe in growing from cuts. In order to be profitable, you need to continue to invest in the business. And it's definitely working.
What has management conveyed to you about their patience with the improvements you're aiming for? I don't look at it in terms of a quick fix. It's really a multiyear growth story. When I came here, there was definitely a commitment from management around investment in the business, and that has happened. There is no timeline, we're a large organization and we want to make sure we remain competitive. I like being in the hot seat, but it's not going to end in six months.
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