It’s fair to say that generally banks aren’t well known for the fairness of their approach to pay. So it was interesting to note the emphasis that UBS, now by far Switzerland’s dominant bank following its 2023 rescue of the failing Credit Suisse, places on the issue of fair pay in its latest, recently issued annual report.

But the problem is that it seems to this reader at least that the bank may not necessarily be focusing on the right forms of fairness in pay.

For example, in the introductory section of the 43-page compensation report, the bank answers its own question, How does UBS support pay fairness?, as follows:

“We pay for performance, and we take pay equity seriously. Across all our locations, we apply the same fair pay standards, reinforced by annual reviews of our approach and policies in line with established equal pay methodologies. In 2025, our statistical pay gap analyses reaffirmed that pay differences between male and female employees in similar roles across our core financial hubs remained below 1%, a difference consistent with that for 2024. If we find any gaps not explained by business or by appropriate employee factors, such as role, responsibility, experience, performance or location, we look at the root causes and address them.”

UBS develops this analysis a little further in the Compensation philosophy and governance section, under the title Fair and equitable pay. Key elements of this discussion read:

“Pay equity and equal opportunity are fundamental to support our strategy. Being an employer of choice and inclusive of all experiences, perspectives and backgrounds is critical to our success. Factors such as gender, culture, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and identity, disability, family, veteran status, generations and part-time status should not impact opportunities available to our employees.

“Fair and consistent pay practices are designed to ensure that employees are appropriately rewarded for their contribution.”

It again emphasises that gender pay gap analysis shows gaps below 1% in pay for male and female employees “in similar roles across our core financial hubs”, an interesting geographical narrowing and also clearly ignoring the general experience that the issues in gender pay arise most often because of differential opportunities for men and women, which tend to lead to a skewing of roles away from strict ‘similarity’. And note that it has a marked gender skew overall in staff, given that only 41% are female.

If we set aside these limitations, this discussion of fairness seems fine as far as it goes, but it barely begins to address the promise of the titles given to it. This is not UBS ‘supporting pay fairness’; this is simply the bank not overtly discriminating in its treatment of different staff – which in many countries and cases will in any case be illegal. The actual question of supporting pay fairness might acknowledge realities outside the bank, rather than this internal focus. The financialisation of our economies has helped fuel the broad inequalities that our world faces, as financial institutions, competing with each other for ‘talent’, bid up the pay of individuals well beyond what is affordable or realistic (even imaginable) for most businesses. The closest UBS comes to a proper understanding of what a broader mindset about fair pay, looking beyond the financial sector, might actually imply is this comment, which at least acknowledges some external benchmark:

“We also aim to ensure that all employees are paid at least a living wage. We regularly assess employees’ salaries against local living wages, using benchmarks defined by the Fair Wage Network. Our analysis in 2025 showed that employees’ salaries were at or above the respective benchmarks.”

A bank that was genuinely seeking to ‘support pay fairness’ might apply similar pay expectations – of that minimum living wage level pay – at all clients and counterparties. A bank that worked with its corporate customers to understand what local living wages might be in their countries of operation and how they might be achieved across relevant workforces while still delivering profitability would be a bank genuinely supporting this ambition.

A bank that was genuinely seeking to ‘support pay fairness’ might consider whether financialisation is leading to pay distortions between the financial sector and almost every other part of the economy.

As ever, the finance industry has a tendency to look inwards at itself and not outward at its role and influence in the real world. An article I reference a couple of times in my forthcoming book invites the industry to think about fairness ‘outside its cocoon’. Only if financial services starts to do that will it genuinely be supporting fairness. 

Duncan Mavin, in his (highly recommended) book telling the sad history of UBS’s takeover target, Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, identifies an unfair approach to pay as being part of the drivers of that bank’s failure: “The behaviour of the bank’s leaders hardly inspired other staff to be the best versions of themselves … Credit Suisse bankers got paid well, whatever happened. When the bank was making a profit, staff made a bundle, regardless of whether the results were driven by strong markets or great management. When the bank made a loss – because of misconduct, fines, bad behaviour or poor strategic decisions – the bonuses were good then too.” 

Inward-looking financial institutions are more likely to fail than ones that look outward and measure fairness against external benchmarks. Instead, they need to look beyond their comfortable cocoon.

See also: Diversity and fairness
Fairness in the pay ratio
Resentment and rents: fairness in executive pay
The Gini in the executive pay bottle

Annual Report 2025, UBS

Fairness Outside the Cocoon, Meir Statman, Financial Analysts Journal, Vol 60, No 6

Meltdown: Scandal, Sleaze and the Collapse of Credit Suisse, Duncan Mavin, Pan Macmillan 2024