Layering AI migration on top of their day jobs has tired workers worried about thier jobs.
Artificial intelligence has not only transformed the financial services industry but has also created massive change fatigue among its workforce.
According to the authors of PwC’s 2026 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, published on the second day of Sibos, 40% of respondents reported feeling were overwhelmed by the pace of change.
“They have been through a lot over the past six or seven years,” said Bhushan Sethi, a partner at PwC, who moderated a Sibos panel on AI-led workforce strategy. “We’ve gone from the Great Recession to quiet quitting. We’re now in the ‘no hire, no fire’ job market in the US and beyond.”
Through it all, companies continue to ask their employees to move faster, reimagine their businesses end-to-end, and standardize their documented processes globally, while their leadership eyes the performance of small AI-enabled startups unencumbered by technology debt, he added. “That’s a challenge.”
Especially when 80% of those polled expect their organization to reduce headcount by 20% in the next few years.
Nonetheless, AI use has left the station.
“We don’t have a choice of going back and saying ‘No, we are not going to move with the industry and trends that are leading the next generation of the financial services industry,’” said Anna Domino, global head of client services at BNY.
“BNY has more than 300 AI-enabled offerings currently in production,” she added. “We also have almost 150 digital employees deployed across the organization, including operations and other functions. Over half our employee population are AI super-users on a daily basis.”
In comparison, only 22% of respondents in PwC’s survey reported using generative AI daily for their jobs, up 8% from the previous year.
Calming the AI Workforce
Allaying a workforce’s anxiety about AI won’t be easy, as 44% of respondents in a PwC survey said they did not trust their senior management.
“That’s a hard environment to bring your best self to work and to optimize and leverage the investments that many, many firms have made and will continue to make in AI-led transformation,” said PwC’s Sethi.
Applying human skills such as empathy and kindness would help leadership manage its workforce’s anxiety, he added. “Let’s face it, we could all do with a little more of that.”
When BNY deploys a new solution, Domino’s team works with the people who currently do the job and lets them lead the bank’s redesign of the process to create more value for the client.
“If you include people in the conversation and give them transparency about how their role will change because of the redesign and what skills they need to learn over time to support the new process, it makes buy-in much easier,” she said.
Another option for employers is to wait a few years and hire those born around 2010, who won’t remember a world without AI.
“We have people in their 20s, mid-20s, and late 20s who are digital natives, but [employers] want those people who came out of their cribs and started playing on tablets and iPhones,” said panelist Darmesh Sethi, a managing director at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC), sharing his personal opinion.
They will enter entry-level jobs after working on their high school newspapers and using AI throughout college, he added. “They are comfortable; they’re confident, and that is what we need. We need a confident workforce that can actually harness the power and potential of what these technologies provide.”
However, the same technologies are eliminating the menial work that once taught entry-level employees the business.
“When we were hiring people out of college 20 years ago, they would be creating spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations,” said BNY’s Domino. “None of that is happening anymore. So, we have to focus on apprenticeships, coaching, shadowing, and bringing that talent in front of clients way sooner than it used to happen 20 or 30 years ago.”
The process would require an investment of time and energy from senior leaders who possess the business knowledge, she added.
SMBC’s Sethi sees entry-level employees moving from grunt work to decision-making. “That is where they are going to have to step up,” he said. “And that is what we are really seeing in our employee training and the intentional hiring of young talent.”