UBS's fourth-quarter 2021 results

Our clients continued to put their trust in us, as was evident from the ongoing momentum in flows and volume growth throughout the year. Together with favorable market conditions and investor sentiment, this led to growth across the firm. During 2021, GWM saw USD 107bn of net new fee-generating assets with inflows in all regions, and there was USD 28bn in net new lending across GWM and P&C Personal Banking, while strong client activity drove YoY increases of 7% in transaction-based income in GWM and 33% in Global Banking income.

Focusing on growth

Our global ecosystem delivers the power of investing to our clients, with UBS as the orchestrator of the value flow through contributors and clients. Our ecosystem has grown to USD 4.6trn of invested assets as we supported our clients, drove positive operating leverage and this resulted in another year of strong performance. Our clients’ needs are at the center of our strategy and we are focusing on serving them in more effective ways, underpinned by technology.

Expanding into new client segments

We are expanding into new client segments, building new capabilities, broadening our footprint, and adding technology-enabled solutions to open new avenues of growth. We will leverage digital to expand our reach starting in the US, where we’ve announced our plans to acquire Wealthfront to deliver a digital wealth management offering to millennial and Gen Z affluent investors. Together, we can expand our wallet share, access new clients, lower the cost to serve, and drive long-term growth. Looking ahead, we are planning similar models in the rest of the world.

Accelerating strategic tech investments

We are accelerating our strategic tech investments, making technology a differentiator by levelling up technology. The aim is to maintain our tech expenses at ~10% of revenues while increasing IT strategic investments.

Maintaining risk and cost discipline

Across the firm, we will maintain our risk and cost discipline to support our growth plans. By streamlining our set-up, optimizing our footprint and exiting certain markets, simplifying and working in an agile way, we aim to deliver USD ~1bn gross in-year cost saves by 2023, which will fund our growth initiatives. We are on track to deliver these cost saves, with USD 0.2bn already achieved in 2021. We continue to have an elevated focus on risk management, with continual enhancement of day-to-day efforts.

Full-year 2021 PBT was USD 9,484m (up 16% YoY), including net credit loss releases of USD 148m, compared with net credit loss expenses of USD 694m in 2020. The cost/income ratio was 73.6%, an increase of 0.4 percentage points YoY. Operating income increased by 10% YoY, with operating expenses up by 8%, partly as a result of an increase in litigation provisions of USD 740m (EUR 650m) taken for the French cross-border matter. Excluding this litigation provision, operating expenses would have increased by 4% and PBT would have increased by 25%. Net profit attributable to shareholders was USD 7,457m (up 14% YoY), with diluted earnings per share of USD 2.06. Return on CET1 capital1 was 17.5%. The quarter-end CET1 capital ratio was 15.0% (guidance: ~13%) and the CET1 leverage ratio was 4.24% (guidance: >3.7%), both up YoY. We intend to propose a 2021 ordinary dividend of USD 0.50 per share2,3. We repurchased USD 2.6bn of shares in 2021, and we intend to repurchase up to USD 5bn of shares during 2022.