Deutsche Bank will see a «big number» of jobs lost to automation, according Chief Executive John Cryan. He also criticized that many of the German bank's employees already are robotic.
Technology and automation is a huge threat to banking jobs, as firms figure out how to more efficiently organize their setups and streamline their processes. Robots are indeed coming for many Deutsche Bank jobs, CEO John Cryan said at an annual banking conference organized by «Handelsblatt».
Will they snap up as many as half of the German lender's nearly 100,000 jobs?, Cryan was asked. «I guess, something like. You want a headline I don’t know, some big number definitely,» he said.
«Accountant = Abacus»
But he revealed an unusual view of the current employment situation: «Today certainly in our bank, we have people behaving like robots and doing mechanical things. Tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people,» Cryan said. «If you take an accountant in our bank, they’re basically an abacus,» he said.
He explained the unflattering comparison by saying a Deutsche Bank accountant currently spends three weeks preparing accounts and crunching data, which could potentially be done in hours by machines.
«Upscaling» Roles
Instead, the bank would like to «upscale» jobs or upgrade their value. The accountant could analyse the automatically-prepared numbers and explain them to management, for example. «Its becoming more disruptive because I think the pace of change is increasing, but I think we have to find new ways of employing people and maybe people need to find new ways of spending their time, because it won’t necessarily be in full-time traditional employment.»
