Luca Pedrotti started working at the former Union Bank of Switzerland in 1989 in Locarno. At first, he only worked between 9 and 11 on the securities counter punching bond coupons. The rest of his time was spent training and playing as a professional footballer for the local team, FC Locarno. It was to be the last stop in his career after stints with the Zurich Grasshoppers and FC Lugano.

«It got to a certain point when I noticed that football was no longer enough. I had achieved my dream and wanted to create a future off the pitch», the now 57-year-old remembers in a conversation with finewsticino.ch. He subsequently became a full-time UBS employee in 1996.

Starting Low

«I started at the very bottom», says Pedrotti, who was born in Lugano. He now manages the Ticino market region with its roughly 720 employees. But his career has not just been a completely straight one.

His UBS managers recognized that he had talent and they promoted him to the rank of managing director at the relatively young age of 37, one of the youngest in the group at that time. And they have him the opportunity to work in different functions both in Switzerland and abroad, including in the Middle East and Africa.

Setbacks

«They were all experiences that I never would have wanted to miss out on,» Pedrotti maintains. But there were also setbacks. After his job was rationalized during a restructuring exercise, he returned home. Even though he had received offers from other financial institutions, it never even entered his mind to leave UBS. «UBS is my bank,» he says.

Pedrotti's home is considered an obsolete financial backwater after numerous tax amnesties conducted by the Italian government between 2001 and 2009, which helped to repatriate significant client assets that had been parked in Ticino.

More Substance

That prompted the number of banks based in Lugano to decline to around 40 institutes from 70 previously. «The declines were massive», indicates Pedrotti, «but there is a great deal of substance in what remains.»

Those developments were noticed by UBS. In the past five years, it has cut the number of branches to 13 from 19, while cutting about 80 jobs.

New Stability

«The numbers have now stabilized, » Pedrotti says, emphasizing that the role profile for employees has changed massively because of digitalization. Employees now have to be far more mobile and adaptable. That is not always easy in that people from four different generations can be working together in a bank. «Every generation reacts differently to change», Pedrotti states.

Both Ticino and the Lugano financial center are going through change as well. For the past two years, there have been efforts to build a fintech cluster between Bellinzona and Chiasso.

Artificial Intelligence

Startups want to settle in the region given its proximity to diverse universities which have faculties in several promising fields. The city of Lugano is trying to profile itself as an international blockchain metropolis, while innovation itself is a very important topic within UBS.

The bank has two business units in the region that work for the entire group. There is a call center with 70 employees and an artificial intelligence research and development center that works together with Ticino universities. It is a source of prestige, and it currently employs about 100 staff, with plans to expand over the next few years, as Pedrotti tells finewsticino.ch.