UBS has announced the passing of Andreas Hoefert who has been with the group for over 15 years.

UBS's chief investment officer for Europe and chief economist for wealth management, Andreas Hoefert, has died at age 48.

"We are deeply saddened by the sudden passing of Andreas Hoefert. As our Wealth Management Chief Economist and Regional CIO Europe, he was a highly respected and well-liked member of our firm and we have extended our deepest sympathies and full support to his wife and family," the Zurich-listed bank said in a statement today.

Hoefert joined the Swiss banking group in 1999 as a senior economist at Group Economic Research, according to a biography on UBS' website. He relocated to UBS Financial Services, New York, in 2006 and acted as chief global economist and deputy head UBS Wealth Management Research until March 2009.

From 2009 until 2012, he led the wealth management research office before focusing more on his role as UBS chief economist and CIO Europe.

Before UBS, Hoefert was as a researcher and economic forecaster at the Swiss Center of Business Cycle Research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. During this time, he was also lecturer at ETH Zurich and at the University of Zurich.