UBS Adds an AI Test for 2027 Junior Bankers

UBS will require 2027 graduate and intern hires in Global Banking and Markets to show they can use AI to improve outcomes and efficiency. People familiar with the matter said fluency questions will be added to those interviews, sitting beside older bars such as a 2:1 degree in the UK and EMEA.

The same rule is being written into other newly advertised roles, those people said, as the bank pushes AI through research, client briefings and staff reviews.

UBS Adds AI Fluency to the 2027 Hiring Filter

The Swiss group is among the first large lenders to make AI literacy an explicit test for junior bankers, rather than a line buried in a technology job spec. The 2027 class still has to clear the academic gates the bank already publishes. In the UK and EMEA that means a 2:1, or the local equivalent, on a first undergraduate degree.

UBS said AI skill now belongs in the hire packet because the technology is changing the work. It also said literacy sits next to, and does not knock out, the academic, analytical and people skills it already wants.

We continuously review our recruitment criteria to ensure they reflect the skills we need. As AI is fundamentally reshaping financial services, AI capabilities and experiences have become an important aspect of future professional success and are as such relevant recruiting criteria.

UBS, statement on recruitment criteria

Stefan Seiler, group head of human resources and a member of the group executive board, has gone further inside the firm. He said AI skills and practical experience are an important factor for future professional success, and that those skills feed into performance reviews and are asked for in many advertised roles.

The bank is not using the new filter as a public substitute for shutting the analyst class. It is still running the Graduate Talent Program, an 18 to 24 month intake with rotations in most divisions, and it is still hiring interns. The change is what a candidate has to prove before the offer, not a notice that the seats are gone.

A Ban on AI in the Same Interview

The careers site that will quiz applicants on how they have used the tools also bans AI in assessments and interviews. Resumes and cover letters may be drafted with help, UBS says, if the content is the candidate’s own. Everything after that is supposed to be unassisted.

RULES FOR AI IN THE APPLICATION

• Documents: AI may help prepare a resume or cover letter, but the text must reflect the applicant’s own skills and understanding.
• Online tests: Assessment tasks must be completed alone, with no AI assistance.
• Video answers: Recorded or virtual interviews must be the candidate’s own words; generated answers are forbidden.
• Recording: Transcribing or analysing an interview with AI or other tools is not allowed and can have legal consequences in some regions.
• Presence: Interviews must be attended in person and in real time; avatars or deepfakes that fake attendance are banned.

Break the rules and UBS says it can pull a candidate from the process, withdraw an offer, or open a disciplinary case even after the person has started. The careers pages also tell applicants that people, not models, score the pre-recorded video round.

That is a tight bind for a 2027 hire. The bank wants evidence that the applicant already uses AI to get better work out the door. It will not let that applicant use AI, or an avatar, in the room where the evidence is judged. The product the research division now ships to clients includes generated analyst faces on video. The applicant is not allowed to send a face that is not theirs.

What the 2027 Graduate Process Still Looks Like

The AI questions are being dropped into a process that otherwise looks like last year’s. Applications in the UK and EMEA typically open in August, with more roles in September. US roles typically open in September. Switzerland reviews year round. India hires through campus cycles from June. Caps still apply: one UK programme and one in the rest of EMEA in the same academic year, and a maximum of three applications in the United States.

ACADEMIC BARS BY REGION

After the form comes a seven-day window for online tests. UBS uses verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, inductive-logical reasoning and a Culture Match exercise, assigned by business area, with no retake. AON hosts practice versions of those online tests. A pre-recorded video round can follow, then a final virtual or in-person interview.

Once inside, graduates are pointed at an AI Fluency Pathway the bank describes as real-world use cases, responsible application and sound judgment. Handshake has already given UBS early-talent marks for that push, including Brand Builder and AI Builder distinctions. The new piece is that some of that fluency is supposed to show up before day one, in the interview, not only in the first training week.

Research Avatars Already Speak for Analysts

The hire test lands on a desk that is already wired. UBS research has used AI-assisted titles and email hooks more than 15,000 times, and the bank says those tools lifted email open rates by 16 percent. A CoAuthor tool, used more than 30,000 times, now sits with nearly 1,000 Global Research professionals. Video has moved off the studio model. Scripts are generated, and the bank uses AI-generated analyst avatars for research video so it can publish more clips without booking a room. Celent gave that work a 2026 Model Sell Side award for GenAI automation.

THE WORK AI ALREADY TOUCHES

STAAT Insights, which scans internal and external signals and drops a briefing in an advisor’s inbox before a meeting, generated more than 20 million AI-identified client opportunities in 2025, a 50 percent rise on the year before. In Hong Kong and Singapore a sibling tool, Conversational Insights, serves more than 200 advisors. Line managers get generative drafts of year-end reviews, which UBS says saves more than 32,000 hours of manager time a year. The manager still signs the review.

Those are the jobs a first-year used to learn by doing until 2 a.m.: first-pass decks, meeting notes, comps tables, a video the coverage banker could send. The 2027 hire is being asked to show they can run the machine that now does the first pass. They are also being asked, in the same breath, not to let that machine sit the test for them.

One Hour a Week, Then a Line on the Review

UBS has spent two years trying to make that fluency ordinary for people already on the payroll. In July 2026 it reported 560 live AI use cases in production, up 92 percent year on year, with more than 920 further applications in development and nine large end-to-end AI programmes running. Around 18,000 software developers are using AI across the build cycle, and the bank said more than a quarter of AI-generated code suggestions go straight into production. Every employee is now allowed to create their own AI agents.

THE IN-HOUSE LITERACY COUNT

• Citizen badge: More than 21,000 employees had earned the AI Citizen badge by July 2026.
• Learning journeys: More than 38,000 employees have completed AI learning journeys, and more than 49,000 have enrolled in AI courses since 2024.
• Managers: More than 96 percent of managers had completed the first AI Enabler stages, with results checked by assessments and badges.
• Leaders: About 1,300 senior leaders, including the group executive board, have finished the AI Senior Leadership Journey.

Global Learning Weeks in 2026 put on 56 AI sessions, drew more than 45,000 enrollments and put 12,000 people into role-specific AI training. The second-quarter results also launched AI Power Hour, which reserves one hour each week for staff to practise on live work. The Oxford-UBS Centre for Applied Artificial Intelligence opened in the same quarter.

The training trail is older than the hire rule. On September 3, 2025, UBS published AI-venture, a graduate exercise run with mentors in 11 locations. A year later the bank stopped treating that skill as something it would teach from a blank page. Seiler’s performance-review line means a missed Power Hour is no longer only a calendar curiosity. It can show up when pay and promotion are discussed, because those discussions start with the review.

Will Junior Bankers Still Learn the Basics?

Conor Hillery, JPMorgan Chase’s co-head for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, put the other side of the trade on the record in December 2025. He said lenders needed to be “very careful” that staff did not “lose an understanding of the basics and fundamentals,” and that his firm was trying to balance speed on routine tasks with teaching juniors core banking skills. If the model and the slide arrive already drafted, the apprenticeship that used to teach a first-year how to see a bad number gets shorter.

Morgan Stanley analysts said in May 2026 that AI could cut 10 to 20 percent of European bank jobs over five years, mostly in central services, risk and compliance rather than in the coverage seat. A 10 percent cut would be about 200,000 roles, against a pool of roughly 2.12 million staff at 35 lenders in their earlier note, and they argued much of that could run through attrition. That is a different cut than the analyst class, but it is the backdrop against which a fluency test reads as insurance.

People familiar with plans at eight banks told a June 2026 industry note that most were not preparing to shrink analyst intake in a material way, and that a handful were hiring more, in part because AI models and slides are still not trusted enough to go to a client unchecked. Spain’s Santander has already looked for advanced AI users in some of its corporate and investment bank graduate programmes, according to company filings.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Hillery: Banks that let AI swallow the grunt work still have to teach juniors the basics, or they will not know when the output is wrong.
• Morgan Stanley analysts: The job loss sits in the middle and back office over five years, and a 10 percent European cut is large enough to run through retirements if banks choose that path.
• Eight-bank check, June 2026: Analyst programmes survive near their current size for now, because managing directors will not yet sign a model they have not had a junior check.

The 2027 class will walk into a firm where every employee can already spin up an agent, a research avatar can already present without the analyst in the room, and a weekly hour on the calendar is reserved for practice. The interview will ask how they have used the tools. It will also ask them to answer, in their own voice, with no avatar in the chair.