UBS now hires for AI skills. Your next job ad may need to, too.

On 7 September, the Financial Times reported that UBS will make AI proficiency an explicit hiring criterion for graduates and interns in its global banking and markets division, starting with its 2027 intake. It will sit alongside academic results and finance aptitude, and interviewers will ask candidates how they have actually used AI tools.

UBS says the new test adds to its usual standards rather than replacing them. Once hired, recruits go through an internal programme the bank calls its AI Fluency Pathway, built around real banking work and responsible use. Reports describe UBS as the first major global investment bank to make AI literacy an entry requirement rather than something taught on the job.

What the bank is actually asking for

Not the ability to open a chatbot. The skills described are more specific: using AI for research, for modelling and for first drafts, and (just as important) recognising when the model has got something wrong. That second skill is the one most teams skip.

Why it matters to businesses here

Few Indonesian companies hire at UBS's scale, but most are already employing people who use AI at work, with or without permission. The real question is whether you know how they use it, what they paste into it, and who checks the result before it reaches a customer.

Hiring for the skill is one answer. The other is to set ground rules everyone works to, and to put AI inside the tools your team already uses (where the data stays yours and a person signs off) rather than across a dozen personal accounts.

Questions worth adding to your own interviews

• Tell us about a piece of work where AI saved you time. What did you check before you trusted it?
• When has an AI tool given you a wrong answer, and how did you notice?
• What would you never paste into a public AI tool at work?