HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery Warns AI Will Reshape Banking Jobs - FinTech Magazine

HSBC CEO Georges Elhedery has warned that AI will both create and destroy jobs – a revelation so profoundly obvious that one wonders if the boardroom has only recently discovered the internet. The bank plans to retrain all 200,000 staff to "adapt", as if the solution to being replaced by a machine is to become a better student of the machine's inevitable takeover. It's the kind of "we're all in this together" messaging that works splendidly until you realise the "together" includes algorithms that don't need lunch breaks or performance reviews.

The retraining logistics are a joke that writes itself. Two hundred thousand employees, each presumably with a full-time job, are supposed to somehow find time to learn new skills that the bank itself admits will eventually render their current skills obsolete. HSBC hasn't released a budget, but if corporate training history is any guide, most will get a few bite-sized videos and a "check-in" with their manager – coincidentally, a manager whose own position is likely in the next wave of cuts. The announcement functions as a preemptive PR inoculation: when the layoffs come, the bank can say "But we offered retraining!"

And what of the creative jobs? Elhedery insists new roles will emerge – presumably in the field of explaining what the AI just did, soothing customers the AI has offended, or writing more press releases about how human-centric the bank's AI strategy remains. The real reshaping is of the corporate narrative: a warning about job displacement has been recast as an uplifting story of personal development. Georges Elhedery gets to be the visionary leader who saw the future coming, even as the future is a bulldozer and the retraining is a leaflet about "embracing change." Cheeky.