Union Bancaire Privée: 4 years of meetings using Sherpany

UBP is one of Switzerland’s largest Wealth and Asset Management banks. In order to keep up with the rate of change in the business environment, they sought a solution that would support the productivity of their leadership meetings. In 2016, they therefore made the decision to implement Sherpany and have been using it over the past four years. We caught up with Claudio Rollini, UBP’s Company Secretary, to learn more about UBP’s reason for choosing our solution and the ways in which it is being used.

An end-to-end solution for decision-making: A necessity in today’s world

Until 2016, UBP’s leadership meetings had relied on the printing of a large volume of documents each year. Handling such a large amount of paper was cumbersome, time-consuming and suboptimal in terms of flexibility and reactivity. Therefore, UBP started looking for alternatives to paper for its Governing bodies’ meetings.

Mr Rollini explained:

Keeping meeting data as secure as a Swiss bank vault

UBP required a solution that satisfied their data compliance and security requirements. Mr Rollini explained that “as a Swiss-based bank, we were not very keen to have our data stored outside of Switzerland.” Sherpany’s use of Swiss data centres, combined with our approach to data security, reassured Mr Rollini that UBP’s data would be kept in the safest and most confidential way possible. 

Trust is a key determinant of any digital transformation process. For businesses choosing to embrace cloud technology, it is vital that they fully trust the organisation with whom they are collaborating. In the case of UBP, trust was also a large factor in the decision to implement Sherpany. Mr Rollini commented that, “Trust is a keyword when you hand over your confidential information to a third party.” From the beginning, UBP and Sherpany have been in close contact to anticipate and prevent any potential issues. Mr Rollini particularly highlighted “Sherpany’s solution-oriented mindset and an appetite to constantly improve”.

Swift decisions, reduced time to market, and greater engagement

The benefits of using Sherpany have been felt throughout UBP, as demonstrated by the company’s expanding use of the solution. Sherpany is used for all Board, Board Sub-committee and Executive Committee meetings, as well as for a growing number of other Committee and Departmental meetings.

UBP’s speed to market has increased. Mr Rollini stated that “With Sherpany information is distributed in a more timely manner, which contributes to streamlining the overall decision-making process.” He continued by saying that Sherpany played its part in UBP’s constant quest to improve processes: “The speed and efficiency of our meetings is improved.” Information from past discussions, votes, and meetings more generally can be digitally recorded in an auditable way and easily retrieved afterwards. UBP’s leadership meetings are not only more efficient, but participants are also more engaged. Mr Rollini explained that engagement has increased because “agendas are always at hand, there is a stronger focus on topics, and no time is wasted flicking through a large number of printed documents”.

In the case of UBP, Sherpany has provided demonstrable improvements to the company’s meeting processes. In the opinion of Mr Rollini, “Sherpany impacted our peoples’ mindsets, and prepared them for the next steps on our digital transformation journey.” This shift in mindset has been instrumental in ensuring alignment between executives at UBP, and Mr Rollini confirmed that, “by changing the mindset of your people and encouraging them to use the same tool, you align them in the ways that they work.” This is especially important in times of remote working, and 2020 has demonstrated the need for robust, standardised processes and effective distributed collaboration in securing business continuity.

The increase in engagement and efficiency proved popular at UBP, and Mr Rollini stated that, “Board and Executive Committee members have been using Sherpany since 2016 and, having seen the benefit, they said: ‘I could use Sherpany for my own division’ and we grew from 19 to 57 Sherpany users.” He told us that more and more teams are inquiring internally about Sherpany.

This case study has shown the clear benefits of Sherpany. The following table highlights UBP’s main reasons for choosing and using Sherpany: