Dive Brief:
- Mike Dargan, group chief operations and technology officer at UBS, will step down at the end of December after nearly a decade at the Swiss bank, according to a Monday statement. The executive will join Berlin-based digital bank N26 as its CEO in April, Dargan said in a LinkedIn post.
- The bank's technology team will report to incoming Group COO Beatriz Martin effective Jan. 1, 2026. Chris Gelvin will serve as interim head of group technology until a permanent successor is appointed, in addition to his current role of COO of Group Technology.
- The addition of technology to the Group COO remit will help the bank "prioritize initiatives related to technology and artificial intelligence," the bank said, while noting changes to the executive board were subject to regulatory sign off.
Dive Insight:
UBS has been revamping its leadership team as it works to complete its integration with Credit Suisse, which it bought in 2023. The bank said the process is expected to take all of next year.
In October, UBS announced several changes to its executive board, including the appointment of Michelle Bereaux, group integration officer, as group head compliance and operational risk control. As part of the changes, the bank said Dargan would "direct even more of his efforts" to priority areas such as AI and digital assets.
It also appointed Daniele Magazzeni as its first chief AI officer, effective Jan 1. 2026. Magazzeni, a former analytics chief for J.P. Morgan, was originally slated to report into Dargan and will head up the bank's AI office, overseeing AI tools deployment.
The company has been working to roll out AI across operations this year, with some 340 live use cases across different business units, CEO Sergio Ermotti said during a Q3 earnings call in October.
As it continues its integration of Credit Suisse, the company has also worked to consolidate its IT estate, with simplification and cost-cutting in mind, he added.
"We are nearly halfway through our application decommissioning road map," Ermotti said. "We have shut down 60% of legacy servers … and processed around 40 petabytes of data."
UBS isn’t alone in its decision to place a sharper focus on AI this year — and the appointment of C-suite leaders to guide those efforts.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia recently announced it nabbed Lloyd's Chief Data and Analytics Officer Ranil Boteju to serve as its chief AI officer. In November, Wells Fargo expanded the purview of Saul Van Beurden, chief executive of the bank's consumer and small business banking, to include the role of head of AI.
