UBS said Friday it had secured a national banking licence in the United States, which should enable the Swiss banking giant to strengthen its position in the US market.
The bank already has a presence in the United States, notably with a branch called UBS Bank USA registered in Utah.
In October, it submitted an application for a national licence to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), an independent office within the Treasury Department responsible for supervising banks.
“We’ve received final approval from the OCC for a national bank charter application,” said Robert Karofsky, the UBS Americas president and a member of the UBS executive board.
“This milestone really positions well for the next phase of growth,” he said in a video posted on LinkedIn.
While the licence will not change anything for current UBS clients in the United States, it should allow the world’s largest wealth management bank to expand its range of services, particularly for simple checking and savings accounts.
“The national bank charter, approved by US regulators Friday, should help the Swiss bank expand beyond its traditional clientele of the super-rich into a pool of affluent and not-quite-ultrawealthy clients,” The Wall Street Journal newspaper said.
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The United States is a key market for UBS, which underlined in its annual report that of global personal financial wealth, North America remains the largest pool at 42 percent, ahead of the Asia-Pacific region (35 percent), and the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region (21 percent), according to its estimates.
In its wealth management division alone, UBS’s invested assets totalled $4.753 trillion in 2025.
“We are among the market leaders in the Americas… around half of the invested assets our wealth management clients entrusted us with are booked in that region,” the bank said in its annual report.
