When you lose your job at UBS, you will probably receive $125k

UBS is not done with cutting costs. As we reported early in February, the Swiss bank wants to extract another $1.1bn from employment costs in 2025. Given that the average of UBS's 105,326 people earned $265k last year, this implies there are over 4,000 more job cuts to come, soon.

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If you are afflicted, the good news is that you can at least expect a six figure payout. 

UBS's 2025 annual report, released today, shows that the bank spent $942m on severance payments for 7,538 people last year, or an average of $125k for each unwanted employee. This was strangely consistent with the average severance payment of $129k that UBS gave the 5,696 people it chopped in 2024.

The key risk takers fired from UBS last year were predictably paid a bit more to disappear. 19 people in this category vanished in 2025 and they received an average of $263k each to do so. This looks parsimonious to the $500k HSBC paid its senior bankers to go, though.

UBS's annual report also reveals that it made 8,024 external hires in 2025. This was down only slightly from the 8,525 external hires that occurred in 2024, but a substantial decline from the 11,435 people UBS recruited from elsewhere in the zealous days of 2023.

The number of graduates, interns and apprentices hired into the bank fell 43% in just two years, to 2,117 in 2025. 

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