HSBC Holdings CEO Georges Elhedery warned Wednesday that artificial intelligence will “destroy” certain jobs while creating others, urging the bank’s more than 211,000 employees to adapt to the shift rather than resist it.
“We all know generative AI will destroy certain jobs and will create new jobs,” Elhedery said during an investor and analyst session in Hong Kong. He told staff they should be “on the journey with us, not fighting us, not disenfranchised, not anxious, overwhelmed and resisting the change,” adding that AI could make employees “more productive versions of themselves.”
HSBC is weighing deep job cuts over the coming years as it bets on AI to shrink its middle and back offices, according to Bloomberg. According to Bloomberg, a source with knowledge of the deliberations indicated that as many as 20,000 positions — equivalent to roughly one in ten of the bank’s employees — could eventually be at risk. The bank is currently deploying AI to accelerate client onboarding and improve financial crime risk monitoring, and is providing staff with training and coding assistance.
Those comments stood in contrast to language used by Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters, who on Tuesday announced that roughly 8,000 positions — amounting to 15% of the bank’s corporate functions — would be cut before 2030, framing the reduction as a shift away from what he described as “lower-value human capital,” Reuters reported. Standard Chartered has roughly 83,000 employees.
The choice of words provoked significant pushback online, including from former Singapore President Halimah Yacob, who took to Facebook to say she found it “disturbing” that employees would be characterized that way, according to Bloomberg. In an effort to contain the fallout, Winters followed up with an internal memo reassuring workers that the bank regarded them highly and pledging that workforce adjustments would be approached with “thought and care,” Reuters reported.
Goldman Sachs COO John Waldron separately described his firm’s traditional operations as a “human assembly line” ripe for automation, according to Bloomberg.
A Morgan Stanley analysis cited by Reuters concluded that across banking, technology, and professional services, AI adoption had already cost about 5% of workers their jobs over the preceding twelve months. The burden of those cuts has fallen disproportionately on staff at offshore hubs such as India and Poland, as well as on junior employees who joined more recently, Reuters reported.
