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UBS' scored a coup with the appointment of ING's Ralph Hamers as its next CEO. finews.com lists the main challenges that current CEO Sergio Ermotti will bequeath to the Dutch banker later this year.

The surprise poaching by UBS of long-standing ING chief Ralph Hamers illustrates that Chairman Axel Weber has recognized the urgency with which the Swiss bank's next chapter needs to start. At UBS, a huge, financially potent but hidebound wealth manager, Hamers has his work cut out for him.

The gaps in the Dutch banker's CV – he's never worked in private banking, or outside of Europe – can be neatly absorbed by high-powered and experienced top executives. Iqbal Khan was recently installed as co-head of wealth, Suni Harford took over a lackluster asset management arm in October, and in Piero Novelli and Rob Karofsky, UBS' investment bank has two pairs of safe hands embarking on another round of spending cuts.

This sets the scene for Hamers to focus on big-picture strategic challenges that UBS (as well as its peer group) faces. finews.com on the six main issues for the 53-year-old Dutch banker to focus on.

1. Preach the Gospel

Even long-time associates of Ermotti grudgingly admit: the Ticino native no longer possesses the pizzazz and charisma to motivate UBS' more than 60,000 staff to head into the next generation of banking. Ermotti, the chief architect of UBS' 2012 turnaround plan, has of late griped more than he has delivered new ideas, as finews.com wrote in June.

Hamers, a natural at public speaking and as close as a star as the European banking industry has, needs to change that. Winning all stakeholders for his vision would lend him the authority to follow through on some of the tougher decisions UBS faces structurally (see point 3).

2. Encumbered by Past

More than ten years out of the financial crisis of 2008/09, UBS is still entangled with issues that predate Ermotti's tenure. Together with chief lawyer Markus Diethelm, Ermotti is about to embark on an appeal to a high-stakes French criminal trial. The bank is also fighting a mortgage security lawsuit in the U.S. – both issues will dominate Ermotti's diary for the remaining eight months of his tenure.  

It will fall to Hamers, who starts in November, to deal with the fallout of both issues. At worst, he will take over a bank that is hobbled by a $5 billion fine in France and can't escape a U.S. criminal trial in the U.S. It is imperative to set both issues aside as soon as possible in order to give full attention to UBS' growth and transformation.

3. Beat the Bloat

While the investment bank and wealth management arms each have detailed spending cuts in train, UBS still has a bloated and opaque structure – which appears to be mainly designed to keep key people in a holding pattern, and prevent them from defecting.

As an outsider, Hamers is sure to have a far less sentimental view of the caste of well-paid vice-chairman and group managing directors which has grown under Ermotti's tenure. Many are in key operating positions – but some are not, begging the question of their special status.

Besides the coterie, UBS also has a bulky corporate center that neither operating chief Sabine Keller-Busse nor former finance chief Tom Naratil could successfully tame. Under Hamers' leadership, Keller-Busse will have to kick it up a notch to squeeze more savings out of the service unit.

4. Radical Digitization

UBS' main challenge aside from its costly bulkiness is equipping itself to compete digitally. Ermotti and his team understood the importance of tech in the «engine room,» hired smart people to tackle it, and gave them the financial leeway to do so. There have been setbacks, and from clients' vantage point, UBS is anything but a first-mover digitally (the promising Smartwealth project, for example, was mothballed).

Digitization is of course where Hamers has the most value to add to UBS – and the most to lose. His credibility is high due to his success at ING. A key personal challenge for the Dutch banker will be to replicate the formula at the much larger, complex, and hidebound Swiss wealth manager.