Big news in the banking world this week was Standard Chartered's announcement on Tuesday that they intend to cut thousands of jobs over the next four years as the global bank moves to increase their adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by replacing, in the words of CEO Bill Winters, "lower-value human capital" with technology.

Headquartered in London, Standard Chartered is aiming to cut more than 15% of its international back-office ​roles by 2030, which would result in around 7,800 redundancies. The roles most affected are those based at the bank’s back-office centres, including Chennai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur and Warsaw. 

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Widespread job losses

Standard Chartered is not the first financial services firm to shed roles as AI takes on more work currently done by humans. Singapore's biggest bank, DBS, said in February that it expected to cut about 4,000 contract and temporary roles over the next three years. PayPal, too, plans to eliminate about 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years despite processing over a trillion dollars in payments last year.

The cuts announced by Standard Chartered should be seen as a worrying trend for many in the banking sector. Last year Morgan Stanley released some research which estimated that AI would put more than 200,000 European banking jobs at risk by 2030, accounting for about 10% of industry roles across the continent.

Beyond the financial sector, big tech firms, most of which are spending huge sums on building tools and infrastructure for AI technology, have made or intend to make major job cuts this year.

In April, Facebook owner Meta said it will cut thousands of jobs next month as it spends more than ever on AI projects. The company told employees that it planned to cut 10% of its workforce - roughly 8,000 staff. It said it would also not fill thousands more open jobs it had been hiring for.

Amazon announced in January that it would lay off more than 30,000 workers, while Oracle laid off more than 10,000 workers.

These are not struggling companies. The cuts being made are not because the business is failing, they are because the business figured out it can do the same work with fewer people and AI handling what junior and mid level roles used to cover.

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