For decades, investment banks sold exclusivity. Human contact, tailored briefings, private calls. Analyst notes weren’t just information; they were status. Now, UBS is flipping that logic. Using OpenAI and Synthesia, the bank is turning select analysts into scalable content assets, replicating their likenesses and voices to generate videos that can be watched by thousands, on demand, at scale.
It’s tempting to see this as a gimmick. But there’s something more foundational going on.
This isn’t just a story about UBS making analysts into avatars. It’s a subtle signal of where financial services, and perhaps all professional communication, is headed.
The bottleneck in corporate communication has always been people. Even with all the data in the world, one analyst can only take so many calls. One strategist can only be in one room at a time. Now that constraint is being loosened. UBS has 720 analysts but produces just 1,000 videos a year, largely because of time, studio access, and editorial capacity. With AI-driven avatars, they aim for 5,000 videos. That’s a 5x increase in output, without adding a single human to the content team.
The move responds to client demand, but also reflects a generational shift in consumption. The rise of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels has redefined what professional communication looks like. Even institutional clients are watching more and reading less. Video now signals clarity and speed, not fluff.
There’s historical precedent here. In the early 2000s, investment firms raced to digitize research via PDF and email. Later, Bloomberg Terminals, Refinitiv feeds, and APIs took over, delivering data directly to algorithms and quants. Now, the interface is shifting again, this time to synthetic video, optimized for human consumption, but produced without human intervention.
This won’t be the last experiment. Expect:
- Hyper-personalized briefings: Imagine every client getting a video tailored to their holdings, geography, and risk profile.
- AI-to-AI communications: Analyst avatars may soon be briefing not just humans but also client-side AI agents charged with portfolio oversight.
- Real-time, multilingual delivery: Today, accents are a limitation. Tomorrow, one avatar may speak fluent Mandarin, Portuguese, and Arabic, with cultural fluency built in.
Skeptics will ask: Is this still “research”? If an AI writes the script and a virtual face reads it, what role does the analyst play?
But that’s missing the point. The avatar isn’t replacing the analyst, it’s freeing them. More time for deep dives, model tweaking, or client conversations that matter. The performance layer, reading the same insights again and again, is offloaded.
What happens when every firm can scale its intellectual capital like this? When the edge is no longer who has the best ideas, but who delivers them fastest, clearest, and with the most emotional impact?
The real transformation isn’t the avatar, it’s the model behind it. UBS is turning ideas into videos, not people into puppets. The bank is operationalizing insight at scale. And as that capability spreads, we may soon see AI-generated briefings not as a novelty, but as the new baseline.
What if the next competitive advantage in finance isn’t who has the most analysts, but who has the most compelling avatars?
