British banking giant Barclays is cutting 5,000 jobs globally as it steps up efforts to reduce operating costs and improve efficiency through technology investments, including artificial intelligence (AI).
The planned redundancies represent about five per cent of the bank’s workforce, with approximately 1,000 positions already eliminated. The remaining cuts are expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
The United Kingdom is expected to bear the largest share of the job losses, particularly in operational and functional roles, although employees in other countries will also be affected.
Barclays Group Chief Executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, said the restructuring was part of a broader strategy to strengthen profitability, supported by investments in technology over several years.
He said AI would play an increasingly significant role in the bank’s operations but cautioned that businesses needed to build the necessary technological infrastructure to maximise its benefits.
“AI has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future,” Venkatakrishnan said.
He added that AI was not the sole foundation of the bank’s efficiency drive, describing it as the “icing on the cake” while emphasising the importance of modern infrastructure.
The development reflects a growing shift across the global banking industry, where financial institutions are embracing automation and AI to simplify processes, lower expenses and reduce the need for human involvement in some administrative and back-office operations.
Standard Chartered is among the lenders pursuing similar cost-cutting measures. Its chief executive spoke earlier in the year about the need to replace what he called “lower-value human capital” while disclosing plans for thousands of job losses.
A Barclays spokesperson said the bank was adapting its workforce to changing business requirements while investing in the skills needed to remain competitive.
“We are positioning Barclays for the future, building the workforce and skills needed to deliver our strategy and meet the evolving needs of our customers and clients,” the spokesperson said.
The bank added that it remained committed to helping employees develop their careers even as it adjusted to changing customer expectations and business priorities.
The announcement coincided with the release of Barclays’ third-quarter results, which showed profits of £2.3bn, representing a 12 per cent increase from the same period last year.
Despite the year-on-year growth, the bank fell short of analysts’ forecasts, with weaker performance in its fixed-income trading business contributing to the disappointing outcome.
Its shares fell by more than 2.5 per cent following the results.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said the bank’s performance had disappointed investors, adding that the announcement of a substantial share buyback had not been enough to fully address their concerns.
Mould said Barclays differed from domestic rivals Lloyds and NatWest because of its sizeable investment banking operations, which expose it to different market conditions.
He described the performance of its trading divisions as mixed, noting that equities trading performed strongly while fixed-income trading struggled.
He also pointed to increasing group costs and two significant risks facing the bank: the prospect of higher taxes on the banking sector in the forthcoming UK Autumn Budget and a reported investigation into possible misrepresentation of risks in its private credit portfolio.
According to Mould, the expected tax changes should become clearer in the near term, but the investigation could exert pressure on Barclays’ shares for a longer period.
The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority is pursuing the reported investigation into the bank’s private credit portfolio.
Barclays’ planned workforce reduction highlights the growing importance of technology-led restructuring in banking, as lenders seek to improve returns while managing rising costs and responding to investor expectations.
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