Banking once sat in that comfortable corner of the career world where stability felt like part of the package.
Ask around, and someone will probably remember being told that a bank job was a sensible choice, the kind of career that came with a proper title and a proper future.
It had the salary, the structure, the prestige and the sort of career ladder that made parents feel reassured.
Even as finance moved online, banks still looked solid from the outside. They could just change their apps and close some branches without losing the old impression of safety.
Then came artificial intelligence (AI), along with a more uncomfortable question about how much of banking work and jobs still need any sort of human intervention at all.
Accenture seems to agree with this, as it estimated that 73% of the time spent by US bank employees has high potential to be affected by generative AI, with 39% exposed to automation and another 34% to augmentation.
Numbers like these make the usual reassurance around AI feel a little too neat.
Plenty of bankers may get better tools, but there are also plenty more who may start asking whether those tools are indeed helping them do the job, or helping the bank need less of them.
Now, the co-pilot story works when everyone still has a seat. But what happens when banks start deciding they do not need everyone in the cockpit anymore?
Whose seat is it going to be next?
The Biggest Lie in AI Is That It Will Not Replace People
The most comforting line about AI has always been that it will not replace humans.
We have notable people like Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who publicly say that it will only remove repetitive work, help people become more productive and free employees to focus on higher-value tasks.
Jensen Huang even also said that people are less likely to lose their jobs to AI than to someone who knows how to use it.
AI has indeed lifted some careers and opened doors for some workers.
PwC found that workers with AI skills earn an average 56% wage premium, which explains why the “AI will help your career” line sounds believable at first.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) also expects AI and information-processing technologies to create 11 million jobs. But those numbers do not erase the other side of the story, with WEF also expecting 9 million jobs to be displaced.
So, there is some truth in that, but only enough truth to make the full story easier to sell. A more honest version would sound rougher.
Recent news in the past 2 days has shown a more uncomfortable nuance that doesn’t sit well to our ears, news regarding how banks no longer wanting humans to do things manually.
That’s a bummer but at least it matches what banks and financial institutions are beginning to say in public.
HSBC Is Saying the Softer Part Out Loud
HSBC CEO, Georges Elhedery, said generative AI will “destroy certain jobs” and create new ones, while urging employees not to fight the change.
He also tried to calm his staff, saying they should not feel “anxious” or “overwhelmed”. His priority, he said, was to give around 200,000 colleagues the tools and training to become more productive and future-ready.
That sounds supportive at first because training is better than silence and redeployment is better than abandonment.
A bank asking employees to work with AI should at least help them understand what they are walking into.
The awkward part is that the reassurance comes with some sort of a warning attached.
Employees are being told to embrace AI because it can help them do more. They’re also being told that some jobs will disappear because of it.
Seems a bit ironic but that is the language many financial institutions who are adopting AI now prefer.
Standard Chartered’s “Lower-Value Human Capital” Turned Sour So Quickly
Standard Chartered gave the AI jobs debate something HSBC did not. A number and a phrase that aged like milk.
The bank said it would cut 15% of its corporate function roles by 2030 as it uses AI and automation to slim operations, improve productivity and lift returns.
Reuters estimated that this could mean nearly 8,000 redundancies out of more than 52,000 employees in those functions.
Reports also brought the impact closer to home, naming back-office centres in Chennai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw as possible areas affected by the cuts.
Then came the phrase in which resulted in huge backlash.
CEO, Bill Winters said the bank was replacing, in some cases, “lower-value human capital” with technology and investment capital.
Winters then tried to clean up the remark in a LinkedIn post, saying he meant that “lower-value roles are more vulnerable to automation”, not that the people doing those jobs had lower value.
He also added that Standard Chartered had a responsibility to help affected colleagues move into higher-value roles where possible.
Still, it is not hard to see why the phrase struck a nerve.
Regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore reportedly sought clarification from Standard Chartered, including on how the planned cuts could affect local operations.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also reportedly questioned whether Standard Chartered had framed AI as a reason to cut staff.
Former Singapore President also criticised the terminology. Halimah Yacob described it as demeaning to discuss workers in such clinical terms.
A lot of companies, banks included, know how to make AI sound harmless. They talk about productivity, new skills and better ways of working but by saying “lower-value human capital”, well, it just sounds different.
The phrase made the whole thing sound colder, as though the bank had already priced some roles out of the future.
They tried to soften the blow by saying that some roles would reduce in number and some would change. But at the same time, new opportunities would also emerge.
That may be true, but it does not change the fact that thousands of people could still be affected.
JPMorgan Shows What the New Banker Looks Like
Standard Chartered shows what happens when AI becomes part of a cost-cutting plan. JPMorgan shows what comes after that.
The bank stated that it may still hire, but not always for the same kind of role.
Its CEO, Jamie Dimon, reportedly said JPMorgan will hire more AI specialists and fewer traditional bankers in certain categories as the bank pushes further into artificial intelligence.
He also said the infamous line that AI would make some employees more productive, while reducing jobs “down the road”. But he did not say that all of this layoffs might happening all at once.
He said JPMorgan could absorb part of the shift through its usual staff turnover, with around 10% of employees leaving each year, or roughly 25,000 to 30,000 people, alongside options such as redeploying staff or letting some leave earlier.
JPMorgan can call it a gradual shift, and maybe that is true. But the bank is still saying the quiet part loudly enough.
The old banking job is being split apart. Some people will become more valuable because they can work with AI. Others may find that the bank no longer needs as many people doing the same work as before.
So, were banking jobs ever really safe in the first place especially with AI in the picture? I doubt that.
Maybe they only felt safe because banks still needed enough people to keep the whole machine running.