NatWest CEO Acknowledges AI Will Displace Banking Jobs

Paul Thwaite, the chief executive of NatWest, has become the latest prominent banking leader to acknowledge that artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to job displacement within the financial sector. Thwaite indicated that while he could not predict whether NatWest's workforce of 60,000 would shrink in the next decade, the nature of employment in the industry "is definitely going to change."

He stated that some current roles will ultimately be "delivered by AI," as the bank continues to increase its hiring in software and AI-related positions. This sentiment echoes warnings from other high-profile figures in the banking industry. Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters previously apologized for referring to staff facing layoffs as "lower value human capital" after the bank announced plans to replace 8,000 roles with AI. Similarly, HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery has stated that AI "will destroy certain jobs and create new jobs."

John Waldron, chief operating officer at Goldman Sachs, described the bank's back-office functions as a "human assembly line" that is increasingly becoming digitized. Analysts at Morgan Stanley project that over 200,000 banking jobs in Europe could be at risk from AI within the next five years.

However, not all industry leaders share this outlook. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has recently tempered his earlier warnings about AI's potential impact on employment, stating he does not believe it will result in a global "jobs apocalypse."