The data: European banks could shed around 200,000 jobs—about 10% of the sector’s workforce—by 2030 as institutions seek savings, says a Morgan Stanley study covered by The Financial Times. The report states that workforce reductions will most likely come from the back and middle office.

Trendspotting: European banks are going through huge headcount reductions unrelated to AI. Billion-dollar cost-cutting targets and huge restructurings are driving the dismissal of tens of thousands of employees:

• UBS has cut over 15,000 employees since it acquired Credit Suisse in 2023 and has an internal target of 35,000 total headcount reductions, down 7% from its peak of 120,000 employees directly post-merger.
• ABN Amro plans to cut 5,200 jobs—over 20% of its workforce—by 2028 as part of a massive restructuring following the acquisition of Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe and NIBC. It’s also selling a personal loan division to another bank.
• Deutsche Bank is in the middle of a €2.5 billion ($2.7 billion) cost savings plan. It planned to cut 2,000 of its 90,000 global retail banking employees in 2025 and continues to shrink its branch network.
• HSBC is spending heavily on global restructuring, including on severance. It has not publicly released a target headcount reduction but plans to to cut employee costs by 8%. The bank has more than 210,000 full-time employees worldwide.

Our take: In banking, AI should not be about doom and gloom. US megabanks have emphasized concrete productivity gains and cost savings related to AI initiatives, with no major headlines about staff cuts.

That narrative, outlined in our October 2025 report GenAI and Agentic AI in Banking 2025, focuses on the billions of dollars in business value that AI enables. The strongest US banks have spent billions and realized billions in savings from AI rather than issuing dire warnings and culling employees.