The global banking sector continues to step up its recruitment efforts for Artificial Intelligence roles as the technology’s prominence continues to grow.
Various financial institutions on both sides of the Atlantic are observing the benefits AI poses for day-to-day tasks and advanced functions. To ensure development stays at a steady pace, banks have hired over 112,000 people for AI roles according to Evident.
The latest report from the AI benchmarking platform shows that banks have been accelerating to establish an extensive talent pool.
Evident’s report assessed the timeframe between Q4 2023 and Q1 2024, finding that 9,238 AI job roles were added by 50 banks, with 17,836 AI-related job descriptions posted.
Although Evident’s latest figures show a 23% decline in AI recruitment, the 112,000 jobs filled show that financial institutions have wasted no time in building up AI teams.
Alexandra Mousavizadeh, Co-Founder and CEO of Evident, said: “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.”
Evident believes that banks are hiring for AI roles across four key areas – long-term resource planning, group-wide onboarding for technical talent, upskilling and educating leaders and users, and balancing central coordination with decentralised training.
As referenced by Mousavizadeh, JP Morgan Chase and Capital One are leading the charge when it comes to AI recruitment. This is a trend which has been observed in previous Evident reports.
This is also not entirely unsurprising when the comments of some financial leaders are taken into account. JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, wrote about AI’s potential for business-wide augmentation in a letter to investors earlier this year, for example.
This is not to say that European banks are sitting idle, however. Europe’s AI banking talent pool is catching up with its US counterparts, with UK banks in particular seeing a 12% increase in AI roles, followed by 11% in the rest of Europe and 10% in the US.
Barclays and HSBC are two UK banks highlighted as active in this area, alongside France’s BNP Paribas, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Spain’s Santander – the latter unveiled a free AI training programme for over 18s in partnership with Google this week.
Mousavizadeh concluded: “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.”