After heading Credit Suisse Monaco for twelve years, since January 2015 Alain Ucari has managed Julius Baer Bank in Monaco. Meet him.
How long ago did you move to Monaco, and why did you move there?
I came in 2002 for career reasons and the group I was working for entrusted me with the management of their Monaco branch. It was a development project with a strong entrepreneurial element. Since coming to Monaco, I have married and set up my home there. My three daughters were all born in Monaco.
Julius Baer bank claims on the website to have visionary thinking. Can you tell us more about that? When have you shown that thinking?
The name Julius Baer stands for a visionary thinking. Combined with our change preparedness and acceptance culture, this approach is our strategy to guarantee the long-term future. It allows Julius Baer to stay one step ahead, while continually seeking to develop our knowledge base so that we can better understand the forces and challenges at the origin of change throughout the world. In this way we can anticipate potential barriers ahead and prepare our positioning and reaction accordingly, to support our business and our customers in the future.
Our visionary thinking enables us to ask important questions for today’s and tomorrow’s investors. In this capacity we launched the "Next Generation" investment initiative, that goes beyond passing trends in the financial markets to favour global analysis of future trends that may have important implications. This initiative helps to balance financial goals and aspirations to preserve family wealth and the well-being of descendants. At our "Next Generation" conference we bring together intellectual leaders to share our viewpoints on the prevailing trends shaping today’s and tomorrow’s world.
Our "Visionary Thinking" advertising campaign highlights our approach, consisting of awareness of the trends that are changing the world. Based on these trends, we develop comprehensive investment solutions for our customers. In an increasingly specialised and fragmented world, very few people or organisations are able to position themselves in the long term, or to identify what interconnects the different parts of a whole.
Our partnership with the FIA Formula E Championship from 2014 is another example that shows our efforts to support important trends for future generations. Formula E is a category of electric racing cars that serves as a research and development lab for electric vehicles.
At Julius Baer, we dare to ask important questions on tomorrow’s world’s opportunities and challenges for today’s and tomorrow’s investors, and to provide the answers as well.
You also emphasise the performance of your investments, mentioning your integrated research and analysis services. How is that a plus and how do you work with them?
Through close collaboration with teams of specialists, Julius Baer’s top-notch in-house analysis gives us accurate information in real time, as well as investment data on shares, bonds, currency and commodities.
Julius Baer research is rigorous and complete at all levels. The department comprises highly qualified experts who meticulously monitor and analyse the world economy. This coverage gives us detailed information on the current dynamics of the financial markets and those factors likely to influence their future development.
We have a dedicated personalised investment advice team in Monaco and Switzerland. It benefits from the expertise the group’s specialists have developed in all areas of financial analysis tailored to customer needs.
In Monaco, do you have a different type of customer from Julius Baer customers in other parts of the world? Do your customers need different types of services?
Julius Baer wishes to be defined first and foremost as a retail bank, aiming at the long term and at customised services. In Monaco, the bank offers customers resident in Monaco all the services of a large international private bank, from mortgages to investment advice and on to discretionary management. Those customers having chosen to reside in Monaco may be of many different nationalities but they all seek a favourable, secure environment for their family and their personal and/or professional wealth, as part of a long-term relationship. In this respect Monaco offers them an ideal setting. Customers resident in Monaco do not have fundamentally different expectations from non-resident customers. It is the mutual knowledge and closeness of the manager and customer that allow greater customisation of services for customers.
Finally, what do you think of the Monaco financial centre’s development?
The Monaco financial centre is in a phase of consolidation and concentration. While some groups have opted to simplify their geographical structure and have left the centre on that basis, others - including primarily Julius Baer - intend to make their presence and development in Monaco long-term, being convinced of the Monegasque financial centre’s growth potential.
Julius Baer Monaco takes part in many of Monaco’s emblematic events and performances, thus evidencing our desire to be deep-rooted in the social, economic and cultural fabric of the Principality of Monaco.
