Barclays to cut 5,000 staff by end of 2026 after increasing use of AI

Barclays has revealed it expects to have cut around 5,000 staff by the end of 2026 after turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to make the bank more efficient.

The banking group said this is the equivalent of about 5% of all its employees, which totalled around 93,000 globally at the end of 2025.

Some 1,000 of the roles were cut during the first half of 2026, and the remainder are spread out over the second half of the year.

The majority of the reductions relate to operational and functional roles across the bank.

Group chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, known within the bank as Venkat, said this was “a result of the investments which we’ve made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make”.

This has seen the adoption of AI to make some work processes more efficient, which has meant the bank can employ fewer roles such as developers.

Barclays is coming towards the end of a three-year strategy to boost performance, which has involved major cost-cutting and ramping up technology capabilities.

In the third quarter, the company made some £200 million worth of “structural cost actions”, part of about £600 million made during the year.

The bulk of the cost cutting came from the UK retail bank, but a proportion was also in its investment bank.

Barclays said it has a further roughly £300 million worth of savings planned for the final three months of the year.

It comes as the banking group reported a pre-tax profit of £2.3 billion for the three months to the end of September, which was 12% higher than the same period a year ago.