London, UK, July 11th, 2024,
FinanceWire
- The world’s biggest banks now employ more than 112,000
AI-related roles, despite a 23% decrease in overall hiring
activity
- JPMorgan Chase and Capital One lead the AI talent race, with
Wells Fargo, Citigroup, UBS and HSBC among the other standout
performers
- The UK banks’ AI talent pool grew most quickly (+12% increase
in AI roles), followed by the rest of Europe (+11%), and then the
US (+10%)
The world’s biggest banks now employ more than 112,000
AI-related roles, according to AI benchmarking and intelligence
platform Evident.
While overall hiring activity across 50 of the world’s largest
banks is down 23% year-on-year, Evident’s latest AI Talent Report shows that there has
been no let-up in the drive to bring in dedicated AI talent, as
banks find themselves under immense pressure to harness AI
technologies and deliver ‘more with less’.
The report examines the central
role that talent is playing in the AI transformation of the banking
industry, as banks look to recruit, upskill and retain the roles
and skill sets necessary to deploy AI at scale.
Evident reveals that the 50 banks tracked in the Evident AI Index added almost 10,000 net new AI
roles (9,238) and posted 17,836 AI-related job descriptions between
Q4 2023 and Q1 2024.
JPMorgan Chase (JPMC) and Capital One lead the AI talent
race based on existing talent capability, new roles added between
Q3 2023 and Q1 2024, and remaining open job vacancies.
Wells Fargo has added the greatest number of new AI roles other
than JPMC, but appears to have slowed its hiring efforts.
Citigroup’s open AI job roles are outpacing Bank of America by
2.8x, as the bank looks to catch up to its rival.
While UBS leads Europe in talent volume following its merger
with Credit Suisse, the bank has added the fewest additional roles
over the past six months of any bank in Evident’s Top 10
leaderboard. Recent job openings have also trended lower than
peers. By contrast, HSBC has posted 30% more open AI roles than its
immediate European peers between Oct 2023 and April 2024.
Alexandra Mousavizadeh, co-founder and CEO of Evident,
comments: “After a brutal wave of layoffs, AI investment is viewed
by the banks as the panacea that will allow them to bring about the
needed productivity gains from their remaining
workforce.
“By analysing the AI talent the banks are bringing in,
we can determine which institutions are best placed to make these
gains a reality. JPMorgan Chase and Capital One are the
trailblazers. They’re laying down the blueprint for others by
addressing AI talent strategy across multiple time
horizons—balancing what they need today versus what they’ll need
tomorrow, and recognising both the need to bring in external AI
talent, as well as the need to retrain and upskill existing
employees for the challenge ahead.”
UK and European banks step up the pace of AI
hiring
The overall pool of banking AI talent has grown particularly in
Europe between Q4 2023 and Q1 2024, with the UK banks growing most
quickly (+12% increase in AI roles), followed by the rest of Europe
(+11%), and then the US (+10%).
Among the European banks, Deutsche Bank and Santander have
increased AI headcount fastest, alongside Barclays, HSBC, and BNP
Paribas, which are together responsible for driving the growth
trends seen in the UK and Europe.
Retraining and upskilling is needed given the shortage
of available AI talent
With a persistent talent shortfall in the AI labour market for
the foreseeable future, the Evident AI Talent report also reveals a
continuing effort among the world’s biggest banks to retrain and
upskill existing talent for the AI adoption journey
ahead.
According to Evident, Société Générale, Capital One, DBS, and
JPMorgan Chase are among the standout performers for their current
AI talent development practices. Société Générale was the only bank
to achieve a perfect score across training and career development
in the most recent Evident AI Index.
AI talent development best practices
revealed
In order to implement AI at scale, banks are actively focusing
on four areas of AI talent development:
1. Long-term resource planning: thinking about
the strategic workforce plan across multiple time horizons.
2. Group-wide onboarding for technical talent
(“builders”): supporting the high level of AI graduates
joining (60% of all incoming AI talent) with training programmes
that establish a shared baseline for incoming “builders”, so they
can quickly add value regardless of where they ultimately work
across the wider organisation.
3. Upskilling and educating both “leaders” and
“users”: looking beyond “builders” to the rest of the
bank, whether training “leaders” in AI literacy, or upskilling and
educating the ultimate “users” of promising AI tools and
applications.
4. Balancing central coordination with decentralised
training: recognising that Group-level orchestration of AI
talent development is aspirational, and decentralised training may
be needed when addressing talent across the naturally siloed lines
of business found at most banks.
Mousavizadeh adds: “The race for AI adoption isn’t
over, but talent remains a critical driver of future success, and
banks need to adopt a comprehensive view of AI talent that helps
evolve the organisation at every level.
“Alongside sourcing technical talent through hiring or
retraining, banks must also look at how to educate their leaders
around AI strategy and communicate it effectively, set up incoming
technical AI talent for future success, and upskill and educate
their wider workforce who will be using these tools – this is
ultimately where AI ROI will be determined.”
About Evident
Evident is a benchmarking and intelligence platform that aims to
provide the most authoritative source of data-driven insights on
how companies are adopting AI.
Beginning with banking, Evident has created the first
independent benchmark for tracking industry-wide AI adoption and
readiness. Drawing from millions of public data points, the Evident
AI Index assesses 50 of the world’s largest banks across four main
areas of AI capability: talent (capability & development),
innovation (research, patents, ventures, ecosystem), leadership (in
public communications and strategy), and responsible AI (including
principles, people, publications and partnerships).
Evident also provides a wealth of ongoing research, data
insights and events - including its annual AI Symposium - to
deep-dive into banking sector AI progress, track trends, and
explore how the world’s biggest financial institutions are
approaching AI adoption, identifying use cases and measuring
outcomes, impact and ROI - providing vital lessons for business
leaders, investors and the financial services ecosystem at
large.
Users can learn more at Evidentinsights.com.
Contact
Ms
Henrietta
Mackenzie
Transatlantic
Henri@transatlanticent.com