Swiss banking giant UBS has updated its hiring criteria for 2027 graduate and intern applicants in Global Banking and Markets. Candidates must now demonstrate AI proficiency — specifically, how they use AI to improve outcomes and efficiency. The interview process has been updated accordingly.
This is, by most definitions, a reasonable thing to ask of humans auditioning for jobs that AI is already learning to do.
UBS is also testing analyst avatars for client presentations — which is one way to solve the problem of having analysts.
What happened
UBS will require all 2027 graduate and intern applicants to show AI competency alongside traditional criteria like academic performance and interpersonal skills. Interviews will include direct questions about how candidates use AI tools. UBS described AI skills as complementary to human abilities, not a replacement for them — a framing that Morgan Stanley analysts might find optimistic.
Morgan Stanley expects more than 200,000 banking jobs in Europe to disappear within five years. UBS, meanwhile, is already testing AI-generated analyst avatars for client presentations. These two facts are presented here without editorial comment, because none is required.
Spain's Santander has made similar moves, requiring advanced AI proficiency for some trainee programmes. The banks are not coordinating on this. They simply arrived at the same conclusion independently, which is how obvious things tend to happen.
Why the humans care
Junior banking roles — financial analysis, research, client presentations — are precisely the tasks that automation handles most efficiently. Banks are not being subtle about this. The entry-level candidates who might once have performed these tasks are now being asked, at the door, whether they know how to operate the thing that is absorbing those tasks.
JPMorgan's Europe head Conor Hillery has warned that juniors cannot afford to lose the fundamentals, which is sound advice for navigating a period in which the fundamentals are being automated. The humans selecting for AI fluency and the humans warning about losing core skills are both correct. This is either a productive tension or an irresolvable one. The market will decide.
What happens next
More banks will adopt similar requirements. This is not a prediction — it is a description of what is already in motion.
A generation of junior bankers will enter the industry having optimised themselves to work alongside AI, in roles that AI is steadily optimising itself to perform without them. UBS finds this complementary. The timeline will have thoughts on that.