For more than twenty years, Sérène El Masri has advised some of the world’s wealthiest clients from Dubai, Geneva and Monaco. As CEO of UBP Monaco, she now runs one of the Principality’s most respected private banks.
MONACO — Few private bankers know both the Gulf and Europe’s wealth centres as well as Sérène El Masri. Since April 2019 she has run Union Bancaire Privée’s Monaco branch, and her career shows how the industry now connects these regions.
The making of a private banker
El Masri started out in law and graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris in 1998. She moved into finance the next year and spent the following twelve years at BNP Paribas Wealth Management, working in the Gulf and in Switzerland. At BNP she led the ultra-high-net-worth segment for EMEA and then became CEO of wealth management for the Middle East and North Africa.
In 2011 Deutsche Bank hired her to lead its private wealth management business in the Middle East and Africa. She was based in Dubai and joined the bank’s EMEA executive committee. She later headed Deutsche Bank (Suisse) SA in Geneva, before joining UBP in 2017. At UBP she first oversaw wealth management for Monaco, Luxembourg and French-speaking markets from Geneva, then moved to the Principality to take the top job.
Building a leader
In her first year at the helm, UBP Monaco hired more than ten relationship managers, and she said publicly at the time that the bank was still looking for talent to strengthen its position in the Principality.
Since then, UBP Monaco has become a leader in the Principality. It was named Best Private Bank in Monaco by PWM/The Banker four years running, from 2020 to 2023, and won WealthBriefing’s award for the best Wealth Management Business in the Principality of Monaco in 2024 and again in 2025. El Masri is also a member of the Monaco Association for Financial Activities (AMAF), the body representing the local financial sector.
She leads the Monaco arm of an unusual institution. UBP was founded in 1969 by Edgar de Picciotto and remains a family-owned, pure-play private bank and asset manager, focused on managing wealth for private and institutional clients.
A strategist’s view
El Masri has set out a clear strategy in the financial press. She sees external asset managers as a strategic lever for the bank. Monaco now has nearly 70 of these firms, and she has described the partnership model as a way to grow assets without growing fixed costs at the same pace. She has also said that UBP chooses its partners on governance, operational strength and the durability of their business, not on performance alone.
She is equally clear about technology. UBP Monaco uses artificial intelligence to flag unusual transactions in its fraud and money-laundering controls, while the analysis of each alert remains in human hands. She has also been firm about where AI does not belong in private banking. Asked by Monaco Economie whether the sector needs a chatbot, she answered: “Anything but a chatbot!”
A bridge between two worlds
Her career has run from Paris to the Gulf, from Geneva to Monaco, and across three of the most demanding institutions in global finance. That makes her the kind of leader who now links the Arab world and Europe in private banking. While many in the sector chase scale, she has built her reputation on judgment, selectivity and long-term relationships.
