What Does UBS's Highest Producer Grid Mean for Junior Advisors on a Team?

The short answer: For 2025, UBS ended the Combined Team Grid, which paid every team member at the rate earned by the team's combined revenue. Pay is now keyed to the team's highest producer: every member's rate hinges on the top producer's revenue, so a $10 million team with a $5 million top producer is paid at the $5 million rate. AdvisorHub reported that the 2025 plan hit teams and junior or lower-producing advisors particularly hard. UBS's 2026 plan eased some of the 2025 cuts, and the 2027 plan leaves the core grid unchanged. For a junior advisor, the question is what your own credited production earns under the current grid. Compare that with what the same production would earn on a team elsewhere, depending on your book of business.

What changed, and when?

Until the end of 2024, UBS's Combined Team Grid paid members of a team from one rate set by the team's combined revenue. AdvisorHub reported on November 21, 2024 that, as of January 1, 2025, UBS would no longer pay team members that way and that "all members' pay rates will hinge on the highest producing member's revenue." In its example, members of a team that generates $10 million are paid at the rate for the $5 million their highest producer generates. AdvisorHub's sources said UBS was the only major brokerage firm with a combined grid. UBS's 2022 compensation guide names a Highest Producer Grid beside the Combined Team Grid, and this post uses that name for the arrangement that now sets every member's rate from the top producer's revenue.

By the arithmetic of the rule, the size of the change depends on the shape of the team: the closer the top producer's revenue sits to the team's total, the smaller the drop. In the $10 million example the top producer accounts for half. Separately, AdvisorHub reported that one advisor on a team with more than $10 million in revenue said the plan as a whole could result in a nearly 4% pay cut.

The grid itself moved in the same plan. AdvisorHub reported that a $1 million to $2 million producer could see a payout rate fall by half a percentage point, and producers below $750,000 could lose two to four points.

On the 2027 plan, our breakdown of UBS Pathways covers what the retention program pays and what it costs to leave. Our earlier summary of the 2025 changes covers the bonus and grid cuts around the team change.

Why does it land on the junior advisor?

A junior advisor on a UBS team has two numbers to watch. The first is whose revenue sets the rate. Under the Highest Producer Grid it is the top producer's, which means a junior's rate follows a book the junior does not control. Because UBS's grid rises with production, a junior on a team with one large producer can be paid at a rate above what the junior's own revenue would earn, subject to the conditions described below. The same rule means the junior's rate moves when the top producer's revenue moves.

The second number is the production credited to you. The rate applies to the revenue the firm credits to your number, and the same credited revenue is what a hiring firm would price in a move. Our guide on whether junior advisors get a recruiting package explains why.

AdvisorHub reported in September 2025 that some senior advisors complained that the 2025 changes made life harder for junior brokers producing less than $750,000, whose grid rates were cut by as much as four percentage points. It also reported that these lower-end producers were then ineligible for team-based bonuses after five years of service, and that the 2026 plan lets them receive the payout of the highest producer on their team until they have 10 years of experience, provided they produce at least $500,000 by their sixth year. In its September 2026 report on the 2027 plan, AdvisorHub summarized the 2025 plan as having hit teams and junior advisors or lower producers particularly hard.

Put together, the junior's position carries three dependencies: the top producer's revenue, the junior's years of service and the junior's own credited production. The plan documents UBS gives you govern each one.

A worked case shows the mechanics. Take a team with $12 million in revenue where one advisor produces $9.5 million and the rest is split among juniors. The highest producer's $9.5 million sets the rate for everyone, so the gap between the old combined-grid rate and the new rate is small. Take a four-person team in which each member produces $3 million. The highest producer's $3 million sets the rate, and every member is paid at the rate for a $3 million book. Both teams total $12 million, and the second sees the larger change. That arithmetic follows from the rule as AdvisorHub described it. Your own team's figures will differ, which is why the grid sheet matters.

What did it do to UBS teams?

UBS expected some of this. In February 2025 its chief financial officer said efforts to align advisor incentives with strategy "may result in a short-term increase in" advisor attrition, as Financial Planning reported. The publicly reported team moves before and after the change, from AdvisorHub's tallies:

• 2024: around 20 teams and $12 billion in assets
• 2025: at least 54 teams, 132 advisors and $51.8 billion
• First half of 2026: at least 27 teams managing $28 billion

The individual-advisor count for the first half of 2026 comes from our own State of Advisor Movement: UBS lost 206 producing advisors and added 77, which leaves the firm 129 short in the half.

Read these as a range of public moves. The tallies include only moves that have been made public, and they count assets that departed with a team, which is a different number from assets that transferred. Other changes landed in the same period, so the figures cannot isolate the grid. They do show the scale of the exits that followed the 2025 plan, and the 2026 and 2027 plans were written in that context. The UBS Knowledge Center tracks the moves as they are reported.

How does ALFA connect to the grid?

A junior advisor who is offered a successor role under UBS's ALFA program takes on funding terms alongside the grid. UBS's own page says "The successor Financial Advisor funds the first 100 percent of ALFA Core." What that means in dollars for a successor is priced in our guide on whether a G2 advisor should sign a sunset agreement as the successor, and the retiring advisor's side is in our ALFA analysis.

What should a junior advisor ask before the 2027 plan takes effect?

Most of the 2027 plan takes effect January 1, 2027. Your grid sheet, your production report and the plan documents answer the first five; what your team agreement or an ALFA agreement permits or restricts is a question for your own securities or employment attorney.

1. Whose revenue sets my grid rate today, and what is that rate?
2. Does my access to the highest producer's rate carry a length-of-service limit, and on what date does it end?
3. How much revenue is credited to me in dollars, and is the team's split in writing?
4. What happens to my rate if the top producer retires, cuts back or leaves?
5. How do the new relationship award and the growth awards credit across the team under the 2027 plan?
6. If I am offered a successor role under ALFA, what do I fund and for how long, and has my own attorney read the restrictions that come with the inherited accounts?
7. What would my credited production earn on a team elsewhere, on that firm's grid, with its method of counting team revenue in writing?

Question 7 needs both grids side by side. Staying can be the right result once the numbers are run.

A junior's number turns on the grid sheet, the team split and the book you carry, so the useful next step is a confidential look at your credited production: what it would earn at other firms, how those firms count team revenue and how day-to-day life differs from one firm to the next. The firm pays Winthrop & Co., and the advisor never pays. Request an Introduction.