Bankers take note: AI could be your next coworker.
Bloomberg Intelligence surveyed chief information and technology officers at 93 major banks, including Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs, in a report released Thursday.
The report showed that AI could lead to as many as 200,000 job cuts in the banking industry in the next three to five years. Executives expect to cut an average of about 3% of their overall workforce as AI automates more tasks. Nearly one in four executives said that more jobs than the average could be cut, about 5% to 10% of their total workforce.
“Any jobs involving routine, repetitive tasks are at risk,” stated Tomasz Noetzel, the Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst who wrote the report.
Noetzel said that back office, middle office, and operations roles were the ones with the highest chances of being cut. Bots could manage customer service inquiries, for example. However, Noetzel also says that AI will only transform these jobs, not eliminate them entirely.
AI is already being used in the banking industry to automate work that was formerly completed by humans. In March, JPMorgan said that its AI cash flow intelligence tool helped some clients cut human work by almost 90%. The tool analyzes, sorts, and categorizes company cash flows.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said that AI has the power to deliver a three-and-a-half-day workweek and increase human lifespans.
In February, “buy now, pay later” financing company Klarna said that its AI chatbot did the work of 700 full-time human agents.
Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski stated earlier this week that AI is currently capable of replacing all jobs, even his own, though it would need more research and development before it could fully accomplish this.
A Citigroup report released in June showed that out of any other industry, including media, software, automotive, and retail, AI posed the highest potential to automate jobs in the finance sector. More than half of the jobs in the banking industry could be automated, per the report.
Citigroup also found that AI could add $170 billion to the banking sector by 2028.
