Banks will half staff number in next decade: Former Barclays’ boss
(25 November 2015 – United Kingdom) Former boss of UK bank Barclays, Antony Jenkins, predicts that banks will halve their workforce in the next decade.
Jenkins’ prediction comes via a speech he gave earlier this week titled “Approaching the Uber moment in financial services", where he suggested that banks will need to battle for profits amid technological change and competition.
"The number of branches and people employed in the financial services sector may decline by as much as 50 percent over the next 10 years, and even in a less harsh scenario I predict they will decline by at least 20 percent," Jenkins said.
Other reasons he outlined for the wholesale changes include technological impacts on customer service, risk management and efficiency. The investment being injected into startups and fintechs meant that the banking industry was close to “real disruption”.
"The barriers to entry are quite high in financial services, so that will allow the incumbents to probably last longer than in many other industries.
"The risk is that incumbents will be pushed into this utility, capital-heavy role that we've seen in other industries like telecoms. Ultimately, that will become intolerable to shareholders, so we could see consolidation and mergers," he said.
He added that another challenge world banks faced, was attracting and retaining the top technology staff as there was preference to work in Silicon Valley or in other industries.
"If banks want to really compete for talent successfully, they are going to have to make themselves interesting places to work. It can't just be about the money, because frankly the money isn't going to be there the way it was before 2008," Jenkins said.
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