Artificial intelligence is to make some banking roles “obsolete” in the coming years, said an expert who also emphasised the need to retrain employees to keep pace with the rapid adoption of the technology.
“The skill set in banks is going to have dramatically shift towards agentic operation,” Brett King, futurist and author told The National on the sidelines of the First Abu Dhabi Bank and IMD Competitiveness Summit 2026 in Abu Dhabi on Monday.
“There'll be a lot of new employees in the bank over the next 10 years but they'll all be agents. You are going to restructure from human plus AI operation. Some people within the bank can be retrained to support those roles. Other roles will become more obsolete.”
The comments come as concerns grow over job losses across industries as the use of AI is increasing globally.
In July, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said AI had already eliminated 30 to 40 per cent of headcount in some of the bank’s departments, with the company outlining plans to invest about $20 billion in technology this year.
In January, Amazon announced 16,000 job cuts worldwide as it expands the adoption of AI tools for efficient operations.
“JP Morgan Chase, a couple of years ago, had 160,000 employees globally,” Mr King said. “By the end of the next decade, by the 2040s, I'd be surprised if they had a few thousand employees.
“Just understand that 99 per cent of banking can be automated and agentic AI-based capabilities is the way we do that. So, in the agentic world of banking, humans just slow things down and are unproductive.”
He said banks will become much more cost effective, much more operationally efficient through AI use. Banks are projected to be more profitable as costs of staffing go down, he added.
“For the Mena region, what's most important is we'll have healthy financial inclusion because the cost of banking goes down and accessibility to financial services improves dramatically.
“Every individual that sits in the middle-income bracket will have access to private banking-style capabilities within a very short period of time through AI.”
Speaking at the same summit, Hischam El Agamy, executive director of IMD Business School, said the Middle East and Africa must develop unique banking models rather than replicating western frameworks because of distinct demographic shifts.
He said 60 per cent of the world's youth will live in the Mena region by 2024, fuelling rising demand for innovation.
Speakers also highlighted the UAE’s economic performance and its positioning in this year's IMD World Competitiveness Ranking report.
The UAE was listed as the world's fifth most competitive nation, with the Emirates coming first globally for economic performance, bureaucracy, adaptability of government policy, employment, international experience, national culture and quality of air transport.
The UAE was the region's top-ranked country overall in the report, which assessed the performance of 70 countries against 67 criteria.
Other countries in the region performed well, with Qatar ranked at 11, Saudi Arabia 13, Bahrain 20, Oman 25 and Kuwait at 31.
