AI is starting to replace humans in operations, analyst jobs | American Banker

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AI is starting to replace humans in operations, analyst jobs<br>By Penny Crosman CloseText

About Penny<br>twitter<br>pennycrosman<br>mailto<br>penny.crosman@arizent.com<br>linkedin<br>pennycrosman

Published July 08, 2026, 2:57 p.m. EDT<br>Updated July 08, 2026, 3:39 p.m. EDT

6 Min Read

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Key insight: Data is starting to show where AI is eating jobs, and operations, data analysis and customer support are vulnerable.

Supporting data: At JPMorganChase, the number of operations and support staff decreased by 4% and 2%, respectively.

Forward look: Experts expect banks to cut back on their use of outsourcing and offshoring, where work is often repeatable and there are clear performance metrics.

Though AI spending and hiring data shows that in general, banks and other big AI spenders are hiring more humans than ever, there are areas where banks are freezing or curtailing the size of their employee bases as they deploy more AI.<br>Processing Content<br>Back-office and operations roles appear to be the most vulnerable. Standard Chartered announced plans to cut 7,800 back-office roles by 2030 as it scales up automation. Data shows operations is the only job category failing to see headcount growth among companies that heavily adopt AI. Repetitive, manual tasks such as reconciling failed equity trades or handling new account paperwork and IPO filings are prime targets for AI displacement.

Support functions, such as credit-card call-center jobs, are shifting toward virtual AI assistants. And outsourced and offshore jobs are at risk because routine tasks with clear performance metrics are a strong fit for AI.<br>Young, highly educated workers can pivot to roles that require AI skills, such as prompt engineers and model validators and testers.<br>"I worry about the people who are mid-career, whose job is largely going to be replaced by AI," said Jeff McMillan, principal of McMillanAI and until February, head of firm-wide AI at Morgan Stanley. "What is unclear to me is: What is the path for that person to reinvent him or herself for the next 20 years in their career? As individuals, we can't wait for somebody to figure that out for us, we have to ourselves start to engage in this conversation."

Operations and support<br>The back office — where employees execute, clear and settle transactions and trades, process loans and manage accounts — appears to be the department most vulnerable to hiring freezes and cutbacks. Ramp, a fintech provider of corporate cards and automated spend management software, and Revelio Labs, an aggregator of workforce data, recently analyzed AI spending data from 21,559 U.S. companies' card and bill pay data against those companies' personnel records. They found that operations was the only job category that failed to see headcount growth among firms making heavy AI investments.

In May, Standard Chartered announced plans to cut 7,800 back-office roles over the next four years as it scales up automation. "It's not about cost-cutting, though that will be the result for sure," CEO Bill Winters told Bloomberg at the time. "It's about having a structurally more productive environment that is fit for the future."<br>JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon told investors in February that his bank has already displaced workers because of AI, and though the bank's head count stayed flat at around 318,500, the size of its operations and support staff fell by 4% and 2%, respectively, while client-facing, revenue-generating roles grew by 4%.<br>Similar job cuts and freezes are happening across the financial industry, according to Carissa Robb, managing partner at SolomonEdwards.<br>"The positions that are more task-oriented, where we are pushing a widget, are benefiting at a faster pace from automation, and so that makes sense [for] some of the operational or support roles," Robb said in an American Banker podcast that will air July 21. And the use of AI in payments brings self-service efficiencies that mean fewer call-center support staff are needed, she said. Similarly, the use of AI in underwriting reduces the need for loan analysts.<br>"Where there are consistent guardrails, processes, repetitive behavior, that certainly makes sense, that is the point," Robb said. "We want to introduce operational efficiencies for those value-added positions, but in a more automated and scaled way."<br>Robb also observed that many of the people in customer-facing roles today started in operations jobs that have been eliminated, meaning that opportunity to learn the business is going away.<br>"How much of that workforce was created and became successful in revenue-generating or...