Sergio P. Ermotti

So first of all of course you need to have the skill set necessary to succeed; you need to have passion so if you do things only to just have a career or getting paid or getting a position that would attract attention is not enough because then perseverance is very important.
Of course you need to have some luck but most importantly you need to understand that you are lucky in that moment and eventually, not very often, you will see have the courage to  take a decision that is maybe driving you to go out of a comfort zone because really if you really want to succeed you need to have a broader experience, you need to be passionate about what you do but you need also to be courageous in a smart way to understand when is the right moment to do something's different and it's very important because- in the next 20 years, I don't need to explain you that the jobs you have in mind today probably won't even exist.

In our digital world it takes a nanosecond for clients to transfer money out of an account and to another bank. In the past, the run of the bank - maybe you saw it when you were going through history - people would have to queue out of the bank or send a letter or call the bank in order to transfer money out, close the account right? Now clients can do it within seconds digitally so it means that all the models that are there to basically manage the liquidity of the bank have to be rethought and that was very clear during the regional bank crisis in the US and eventually also for Credit Suisse.

When you look at sponsors or private equity or specialised funds doing equities or credit or any new hybrid form of disintermediation of the traditional banking industry they have created a lot of value but also created some  hidden risks that are not yet fully understood so I do expect  that this trend is likely to continue until you have a problem emerging. Usually you see politicians and regulators react after the events; very rarely can they stop something that's happening right now. I'm not saying that is all wrong but there are definitely some areas where you would wonder what is the benefit of taking out this kind of  activity from a regulated transparent banking system and allowing them to go into a non-regulated system?

Of course banks will lose out in certain areas but on the other hand banks will continue to be a vital, will continue to play a vital role in economies; the ability to embrace technology, artificial intelligence will allow us to become more efficient and effective in the way we manage clients, businesses, we manage cost, we manage and create value in different way like we did in the last 100 years.