What is ABCDE?

One of my most important responsibilities as a technology leader today, I think, is distilling technical strategy and concepts into straightforward language for stakeholders, my team and others. As the interest and importance of tech in our industry grows with each day, it becomes ever more important to keep focused on keeping everyone aligned on priorities and direction of travel in this digital world.

We use the term 'ABCDE' to explain the levers we are pulling at UBS when it comes to our innovation priorities and digital transformation. These days the term has become ubiquitous in our technology team. At UBS ABCDE means:

A – AI and Automation

UBS has been using different aspects of AI for some time now and its adoption is picking up speed every day as the technology matures and as we continue our development efforts and build up our expertise. So our adoption of automation and other AI tools and applications like machine learning and natural language processing will continue and grow so we can keep bringing new efficiencies into our operations, manage and protect against our risks and to free up our valuable human capital to shift over into different kinds of work and creating more value for the Firm overall.

B – un-Bundling and Blockchain

Shifting towards a more open model of banking demands a solid API model and strategy which is what sets us up to properly benefit from new technologies or exploring new business models and smart partnerships. We have been early thought leaders around Blockchain and other emerging technologies—but truly opening ourselves up and un-Bundling some of our services in a secure and controlled way will be the real catalyst for growth and scale over the next few years.

C – Cloud and Connectivity

Cloud computing is one of the biggest drivers for change in our industry and it brings with it a major shift in the way we will do things over time. We are opting for a hybrid cloud approach—relying on different providers for different workloads based on their capabilities. As we keep moving forward in our Cloud journey, secure connectivity and risk management becomes even more important—so as part of this we keep our 'secure by design' mantra front and center to everything we do in this area. 

D – Data

Data is not just a part of our strategic approach to innovation, it's THE foundation on which our entire technical ecosystem is built. As a Firm, we generate billions of data points every few seconds. So our dual challenge and opportunity will be to keep extracting value from the data we generate and to interpret and analyze it through smart uses of AI like machine learning and NLP. The way we manage our data and the risks around managing such vast data sets is critical to our future.

E – Experience

The digital experience for our clients and for our employees is so important to get right and to keep improving iteratively. Whether it’s the interfaces our clients use as the first point of contact or the way we experience our basic technology at work, the digital experience needs to be seamless, it needs to be cross-device, it needs to be secure and it needs to be intuitive. This is why we've really stepped up the focus on experience through our digital factories, our End User Experience teams and why we keep investing in the infrastructure which supports it all and makes it stable and secure.

ABCDE as a framework doesn't cover everything our technology team delivers, but in my view, it ties together our key strategic priorities and allows us to focus on the massive technological trends that we are betting on to keep us competitive well into the future.