Barclays to cut 5,000 jobs this year as it turns to AI

Barclays expects to have cut around 5,000 jobs by the end of the year, as the bank increasingly uses technology and artificial intelligence to make its operations more efficient.

The bank said the figure was about 5 per cent of its global workforce, which stood at around 93,000 people at the end of 2025. About 1,000 jobs went in the first half of 2026, with the rest being cut in the second half. Most are in operational and support roles.

"The icing on the cake"

The chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, known inside the bank as Venkat, said the cuts were "a result of the investments which we've made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make". He said most of the savings had come from modernising the bank's systems and simplifying its processes, rather than from AI itself.

"AI has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future," he said. "I've often said that it is the icing on the cake. It's not the cake, because you need to do the infrastructure build to get the benefits of AI. Where the infrastructure is modern, we've been applying it here."

The bank has used AI to streamline some kinds of work, allowing it to reduce staff numbers in areas such as software development.

Profit up 12 per cent

The announcement came as Barclays reported a pre-tax profit of £2.3 billion for the three months to September, up 12 per cent on the same period last year, with income rising in its UK retail and corporate banks, its wealth management arm and its investment bank.

The bank is nearing the end of a three-year plan to improve performance through cost cutting and investment in technology. It made about £200 million of "structural cost" savings in the third quarter, taking the total for the year to around £600 million, roughly twice what it had expected earlier in the year. Most came from the UK retail bank. It has identified a further £300 million of savings for the final three months of the year.

Budget bank tax

The results come less than a week before the chancellor, John Healey, delivers his budget, amid reports that he is planning to raise taxes on banks' profits.

Asked about the speculation, Venkat said he had made his views on bank taxes "very clear", having previously argued that UK banks already pay more tax than those in other countries.

"We are already a bank which makes a lot of our money outside the UK, so this is not a question of a financial hit to us. It's bearable," he said. "It's a question of proportion and it's a question of market signalling. But I deeply respect the responsibilities that the chancellor bears, and he has our full support and backing."

The cuts are the latest sign of how banks and other large employers are using new technology to reduce staff numbers in back-office roles. Financial services is a major employer in Birmingham, where HSBC UK has its headquarters and several other banks have large offices.