Barclays cuts 5,000 jobs as AI makes work more efficient
Barclays bank plans to cut 5,000 jobs by the end of 2026 as part of a strategy to increase efficiency through artificial intelligence. The reductions represent 5% of the bank's global workforce and primarily affect operational and functional roles.
Why it matters
This highlights the growing trend of major financial institutions replacing human labor with AI to reduce structural costs and improve profit margins.
Barclays has revealed it expects to have cut around 5,000 staff by the end of 2026 after turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to make the bank more efficient.
The UK banking group said this is the equivalent of about 5% of all its employees, which totalled around 93,000 globally at the end of 2025.
Some 1,000 of the roles were cut during the first half of 2026, and the remainder are spread out over the second half of the year.
The majority of the reductions relate to operational and functional roles across the bank.
Group chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, known within the bank as Venkat, said this was "a result of the investments which we've made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make".
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in