Barclays to cut about 5,000 jobs as it adopts AI
About 5% of the workforce, with 1,000 posts already closed and 4,000 more by year end; chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan called AI 'the icing on the cake', and the Unite union called it an excuse.
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Barclays said it is cutting around 5,000 jobs as it brings more artificial intelligence into its work, the BBC reported on 22 October, alongside the bank’s third-quarter results. The bank said 1,000 posts had already been closed and a further 4,000 reductions would be complete by the end of the year, about 5% of its global workforce. The cuts are concentrated in its UK retail bank, though some UK back-office work is done in India, where the BBC said a significant share of the reductions is expected to fall. Barclays said around 60% of the cuts will be in support functions, including developers.
The bank’s framing was that AI is one part of a wider programme, not its cause. Chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan said the changes came from a modernisation plan and heavy investment in technology. “AI has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future,” he said, adding: “AI is the icing on the cake not the cake. Because you need to do the infrastructure build to get the benefits of AI.” The BBC noted that not all of the cuts are due to AI, and that Barclays is reaching the end of a three-year cost-cutting programme. The bank said efficiency measures should deliver a further £1.1bn of savings in 2027.
Reactions split. Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, which represents banking staff, said Barclays was “using AI as an excuse to discard its loyal and long-suffering workforce”. Will Howlett, a financials analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said the cuts showed how AI and automation could reshape banking, with years of technology spending now translating into fewer people needed to run the business. Another analyst, Russ Mould of AJ Bell, said banks had not yet moved widely to introduce AI and would weigh security and customer service first. The BBC reported that Barclays’s profit of £2.3bn for the quarter was higher than a year earlier but slightly below forecast.
The BBC said HSBC, Standard Chartered and Danske Bank had also flagged AI-related job cuts this year. Whether the reductions can be attributed to AI, as opposed to a cost programme already under way, is the open question in this case as in Kroger’s and HubSpot’s announcements earlier in October.