UK bank Barclays links job cuts to AI. Rivals at home never followed such moves.
Barclays said on 22 October it will cut about 5,000 jobs. Its finance director said AI makes staff more productive.
What happened
Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, NatWest Group and Santander report their third-quarter results next week, the same week as the Budget.
Barclays will cut about 5,000 jobs, around 5% of its 93,000 staff. The bank announced it with its quarterly results on , and 1,000 of those jobs have already gone this year. Finance director Anna Cross said about 60% of the cuts fall on support teams, “including fewer developers, as AI makes our people more productive“.
Chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan called AI “icing on the cake“. He said the main reason is the bank’s spending on technology. Sharon Graham, head of the Unite union, said the bank is “using AI as an excuse to discard its loyal and long-suffering workforce“.
Other big UK banks report next. HSBC reports on , Banco Santander, the owner of Santander UK, on , Lloyds Banking Group on and NatWest Group on . On the Budget may also raise the extra tax on bank profits from 3% to 8%.
The BBC reports that HSBC and Standard Chartered have already linked job cuts to AI this year. AJ Bell analyst Russ Mould said: “It will be intriguing to see what other banks say in their results in the coming weeks“.
On the Guardian reported that Nationwide is cutting another 275 jobs after buying Virgin Money, on top of 600 in June. Nationwide said these cuts are not linked to AI. It gives its half-year results on .
Interim Results 2026/27:
Nationwide, investor relations calendar
Sources: standard.co.uk
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a big firm announced at least 1,000 job cuts at once and itself named a new technology among the reasons, such as online banking, automation or AI. We found nine such job cuts from 2014 to 2026, six of them at banks. Each time we checked whether another big firm in the same industry announced cuts for the same reason within 90 days.
Show the other 7 cases
The Read
When a rival bank did follow, it moved fast: after 4, 9 and 28 days, and never later within 90 days. Each time the rival was from another country. After Lloyds in 2014 and Commerzbank in 2016 it was ING in the Netherlands, and after ING in 2016 it was Lloyds. No UK bank followed Lloyds in 2014 or Standard Chartered in 2026.
There are reasons for doubt. All three follow-ups came in 2014 and 2016, when banks talked about online banking. Since 2023, BT, DBS, Lufthansa, HP and Standard Chartered named AI, and no big rival in the same industry followed within 90 days. Lloyds’ 1,230 cuts in 2016 were part of its plan from 2014. Two of the three follow-ups were by the same Dutch bank, ING.
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