Barclays to cut 5000 jobs this year amid AI push

Barclays expects to have cut about 5000 staff by the end of 2026 after turning to artificial intelligence to make efficiencies.

The banking group says the move equates to about five per cent of all employees, which totalled around 93,000 globally at the end of 2025.

Some 1000 roles were cut during the first half of 2026, and the remainder are spread out over the second half of the year.

The majority of the reductions relate to operational and functional roles.

Group chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, known within the bank as Venkat, said the cuts were “a result of the investments made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make”.

Venkat said the tech investment involved “modernising our platforms and harmonising our systems and having simpler and better processes”.

He added: “That is driving the bulk of the efficiency gains that you’ve seen so far.

“Artificial intelligence has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future.

“I’ve often said that it is the icing on the cake – it’s not the cake – because you need to do the infrastructure build to get the benefits of artificial intelligence.

“Where the infrastructure is modern, we’ve been applying it here.”

In the third quarter, Barclays made some £200 million worth of “structural cost actions”, part of about £600 million made during the year.

The bulk of the cost cutting came from the UK retail bank, but a proportion was also in its investment bank.

Barclays said it has a further roughly £300 million worth of savings planned for the final three months of the year.

The changes come as the banking group reported a pre-tax profit of £2.3 billion for the three months to the end of September, which was 12 per cent higher than the same period a year ago.

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