HSBC plans to cut half of its management and specialist positions in wealth management and reduce the number of human financial advisers by 70%.
According to a Financial Times report, the bank is making cuts to its workforce across its wealth management business, using artificial intelligence (AI) to replace them.
The report said that a source described the cuts as “deep, wide and brutal”, with affected staff to leave at the end of this month.
“HSBC UK is a long-established, leading UK wealth manager and premium banking provider,” said HSBC in a statement. “We’re continuing to evolve to deliver more digitally enabled products and journeys to support our best-in-class wealth service and meet the changing needs of our customers.”
Recruiting in AI
The bank announced in July that it was launching an artificial AI centre of excellence in Singapore, with the aim to recruit 100 AI specialists. The plan was for the centre to start applying AI to customer wealth journey conversations as one of its initial focuses.
According to the latest AI benchmarking exercise for the global banking sector, HSBC ranked number 11 globally in terms of AI adoption, the highest positioned UK bank.
In a report last year, Evident said AI-related roles could be the only “safe jobs” in the banking sector as financial organisations “relentlessly” press on with AI-led transformation.
HSBC named its first chief AI officer in March and is investing heavily in the technology.
In June, as part of a deal with Google Cloud, HSBC said it will create more than 200 AI use cases across its business, and it expects to make hundreds of millions of pounds in revenue and efficiency gains as a result.
It already has around 600 applications running on the Google Cloud service, but the new arrangement will see more than 200 AI use cases added in the next two years. The bank said it will prioritise the highest-value initiatives, where estimated value exceeds $100m.
Jobs are changing
Meanwhile, Lloyds Banking Group, which came in at number 15 in Evident’s North America dominated global AI rankings, recently said non-tech staff are bolstering their AI skills, while the bank is adding 300 roles that will focus on agentic AI.
In January, the bank announced plans train all 67,000 of its employees how to use AI this year through its AI Academy, with the aim of reaching its target of all staff being AI literate by the end of this year.
In tech development, the bank created 300 agentic AI roles and announced that an initial 33 Lloyds bank apprentices will begin Level 6 AI Engineering apprenticeships.
The bank said the 300 agentic AI roles will be filled both from within the existing bank workforce and externally. It includes data and AI scientists, engineers, responsible AI specialists and AI product managers.
In the Nordics, Nordea is shedding 1,500 jobs in the next two years through AI. In March, the bank, which has around 30,000 staff, disclosed its plans to change the “workforce composition” to investors, with €190m in planned restructuring costs.
Nordea’s 2030 strategy was announced in November 2025. At the time, the bank said: “Technology, data and AI will be central to this shift. They will enable Nordea to turn local processes into Nordic-wide ones, reduce platforms and applications, modernise legacy systems and increase engineering productivity.
