HSBC CEO: AI Will Disrupt Jobs, so Upskilling is Key

HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery has said that AI will create and destroy certain jobs across the financial industry, with the bank planning to retrain its workforce to embrace the coming shift.

Speaking at an HSBC investor day event beginning on 19 May, Georges says workers needed to embrace AI-driven change rather than resist it and work with the bank on navigating the new technology.

He framed the transition as a shared endeavour across employees, managers and HR to integrate AI responsibly and at pace.

“We all know gen AI will destroy certain jobs and will create new jobs,” Georges notes.

“But my initial mission is to have 200,000 colleagues with us on this journey. However, many will be left at the end of the journey isn't the problem.

“The problem is how can we make sure that those 200,000 colleagues have been given all the capabilities, the training, the tools to make themselves future ready, be more productive versions of themselves.”

George continues to explain that HSBC staff needed to ensure they were “not fighting” the bank over these developments and weren’t “resisting the change”.

He emphasises constructive engagement so employees can access the learning, tools and support required to move into emerging roles as legacy tasks are automated.

He adds that getting the bank “future ready” was his top priority as it recognised the “enormous opportunity” in AI. That agenda, he suggests, will hinge on equipping people with the right capabilities while maintaining momentum on transformation.

The rush to save costs and drive automation

Georges’s points on AI and its future impact come a day after banking rival Standard Chartered announced plans to cut thousands of jobs worldwide over the next few years, making it the first global bank to explicitly connect job cuts with AI adoption.

For senior HR leaders, the signal is clear: operating models are being redesigned with automation at the core, requiring proactive role evolution, reskilling and redeployment at scale.

Speaking at a Hong Kong investor event on 19 May, Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters said the bank plans to replace “lower-value human ​capital” with technology and other investments.

“We don’t have job losses, but we do have job role reductions in favour of the machines,” Bill told the event’s audience, “and that will accelerate as we go forward into AI.”

He added that the jobs affected were mostly non-client-facing.

The bank said it plans to cut 15% of its corporate function roles by 2030, which could see more than 7,000 redundancies across its 80,000-employee workforce worldwide.

Taken alongside HSBC’s stance, these moves highlight a converging trend across financial institutions as they balance productivity and cost imperatives with the rapid integration of frontier AI models.

Empowering employees and customers with AI

HSBC’s appointment of David Rice as the company’s first Chief AI Officer in March 2026 signals a deliberate, enterprise-wide commitment to AI-enabled performance, with a clear mandate to increase returns through cost efficiencies and to automate and streamline core operations.

During an earnings call in February 2026, Georges said gen AI was one of the bank’s most important investment areas, with plans to use the technology for employee assistance, process reengineering and customer experience.

“Our ambition here is simple – we will empower our colleagues to use AI to create a personalised experience for each customer, deliver it safely, in real time and at scale, while keeping human judgement, decision-making and accountability at the core,” Georges said on the call.

The emphasis on human oversight underscores the need for disciplined workforce enablement: upskilling, new governance capabilities and aligned incentives so people can use AI responsibly and productively.

The bank’s onboarding and Know Your Customer function, financial risk and monitoring, contact centres and wealth management are also undergoing an AI transformation, according to an investor presentation.

These are people-intensive domains where automation and augmentation can materially improve speed, accuracy and customer satisfaction – provided employees have the tools, training and support to transition into higher-value tasks such as exception handling, advisory and complex problem-solving.

According to data from McKinsey, global banks plan to substantially increase AI investments over the next few years.

The data estimates that gen AI could add between US$200bn and US$340bn in value annually across the entire banking sector.

For HR leaders, that value will be unlocked through disciplined execution: building AI fluency across leadership and frontline teams, establishing clear pathways for reskilling and redeployment, and embedding accountability for safe, ethical use as AI moves from experimentation to everyday work.