Standard Chartered to replace “lower-value human capital,” cutting jobs “in favor of the machines”
Standard Chartered is announcing a major “it’s not you, it’s me” corporate makeover with a 15% cut of its administrative roles (roughly 8,000 jobs) by 2030 in favor of automated systems.
“It is not cost-cutting, but it is replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital that we are putting in,” said CEO Bill Winters.
Congratulations to Standard Chartered employees who survive this culling; obviously, your CEO thinks you’re at least medium-value human capital.
Defending the strategy at a press briefing in Hong Kong, Winters explicitly rejected framing the large layoffs as a standard budget-slashing initiative.
He noted that the bank does not view the transition as an unmitigated loss of staff, but rather “job role reductions in favor of the machines,” which will “accelerate as we go full-bore into AI.”
The operational downsizing aims to boost profitability and increase overall income per employee by 20% over the next two years.
The bank joins a long list of companies that have announced job cuts in concert with plans to lean more into AI. Per CNBC, the subsequent performance of these stocks varies significantly, with some up more than 40% and others down just as much, or worse.
