Davos 2023: UBS chairman says ‘eyes off the ball’ from non-bank regulators

UBS chairman Colm Kelleher said traditional financial firms were “system safe” after years of tighter regulation, but the guardians of global financial markets needed to go even further to root out the risks of the non-banking sector.

“Regulators have – respectfully – taken their eyes off the ball on the non-banking sector,” said the chairman of Switzerland’s largest bank during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, referring to a category of loosely controlled financial settings. businesses.

“Banks and insurance companies are well regulated. They are systemically safe, we can argue,” he added.

The world’s largest banks have emerged largely unscathed from months of turmoil in the emerging cryptocurrency sector, which has toppled several major crypto investors, lenders, and exchanges.

“I think we dodged a bullet because this thing exploded really quickly, but it will come back in some form,” he said.

“We’re looking at the regulatory framework that will allow us to accommodate that for our customers.”

(Reporting by Stefania Spezzati and Sinead Cruise; editing by Bernadette Baum)