Those same bankers are forecasting that up to half the current number of banking jobs could be at risk from the impact of technology.
Speaking at a conference in Frankfurt the Chief Executive of Deutsche Bank, John Cryan, has warned that large numbers of staff will certainly be losing their jobs.
Apparently, Cryan told an audience in Frankfurt that: “In our bank we have people doing work like robots. Tomorrow we will have robots behaving like people. It doesn’t matter if we as a bank will participate in these changes or not, it is going to happen.”
According to the German publication Handelsblatt he said: “The sad truth for the banking industry is, we won‘t need as many people as today.”
Millions of jobs appear to be at risk and the banking sector is just another in a growing list of sectors that is facing profound and far reaching changes.
According to Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, robots will be able to take on more work with up to 15m jobs in Britain at risk and not just low-skilled ones.
But are the risks as great as they appear to be? Others suggest that businesses will only embrace automation if it is profitable to do so and if robots do end up replacing workers on the scale suggested by Haldane – who will producers sell to if unemployment is in its millions?
Could automation change the jobs market for the better? Cryan thinks it might. He suggests that machines could be left with the number crunching while people get to analyse the data in more detail, making more intelligent and informed decisions. Having experienced the banking industry at first hand intelligent and informed decisions would be a bonus!
