AI will eliminate some jobs in Britain’s banking sector, a senior Microsoft executive has told City AM, as Barclays became the latest major lender to announce thousands of cuts linked to the technology.
Bill Borden, Microsoft’s global head of financial services, told City AM that AI would replace much of the routine work traditionally carried out by junior bankers, changing the skills needed to enter the industry.
“Clearly there’s going to be an impact on human capital, for sure”, he said at Microsoft’s London conference on Wednesday.
“There will be a layer of all kinds of remedial, kind of repetitive, manual-type things [that] are going to get eliminated”.
Barclays announced plans on Thursday to cut 5,000 jobs this year, equivalent to around five per cent of its workforce, as it expands its use of AI.
Around 60 per cent of the cuts will fall in support functions, with developers also among those affected.
Barclays chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan said the bank would deploy AI widely but insisted the tech was “the icing on the cake not the cake”.
The announcement follows plans by HSBC to overhaul its UK wealth management business, potentially cutting hundreds of roles, while Standard Chartered has outlined plans to eliminate almost 8,000 back-office jobs by 2030.
Junior bankers face uncertainty
Borden told City AM that AI was already changing the work of junior analysts, who traditionally spend hours reviewing data and preparing presentations for senior bankers.
Those tasks can now be completed far more quickly, leaving banks to reconsider how junior staff are trained and what work they should be doing.
“The question becomes what higher-value work can that analyst do”, he said.
Borden acknowledged that banks could eventually need fewer employees as AI takes over routine tasks, but argued that the technology could also create new roles.
He pointed to the introduction of spreadsheets and the internet, which initially raised fears of job losses but ultimately created new opportunities.
However, he conceded that it remained unclear whether new jobs would make up for those lost.
“Does that offset? Remains to be seen”, he told City AM.
Concerns over AI impact
The comments come as Microsoft’s own research reveals concerns among British workers about the impact of AI on employment.
A survey of 5,000 UK employees found that 57 per cent of those using AI at work feared it would reduce opportunities for young people entering the workforce, while 35 per cent worried about their own job security.
Despite those concerns, British banks are pressing ahead with investment.
Barclays has rolled out Microsoft’s Copilot software to around 100,000 employees, with Borden citing the bank’s reported saving of roughly one million working hours.
He said banks were increasingly looking beyond time savings towards using AI to carry out more complex work, from processing loans to checking transactions and handling customer enquiries.
Earlier this week, the Financial Conduct Authority warned that banks must report significant AI failures and near-misses, as the technology becomes more involved in sensitive financial operations.
Borden said banks needed to monitor what their AI systems were doing and be able to stop them if they acted outside their instructions.
He also rejected suggestions that British banks were falling behind international rivals, arguing that the pace of adoption largely depended on how much risk individual institutions were willing to take.
“I don’t think they’re farther behind how people are thinking about using the technologies than the other institutions”. he told City AM.