The boss of Standard Chartered has rowed back on comments suggesting artificial intelligence would replace \u201clower-value human capital\u201d after prompting widespread backlash as the bank announced swathes of job cuts.<\/p>\n
Bill Winters, the Asian-focused bank\u2019s chief executive, sent a memo to workers, seen by the Press Association, saying the remarks were taken \u201cout of context\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cMany of you will have seen media coverage following the investor event in Hong Kong, particularly the reporting around automation, AI, and workforce changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this may be unsettling when reduced to simple headlines or a quote out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWhere roles do fall away, it reflects changes in the work, not the value of our people.\u201d<\/p>\n
It follows the announcement by the bank on Tuesday that it would cut around 7,800 jobs as it ramps up the use of AI across its operations.<\/p>\n
The London-based banking giant said it will cut more than 15% of back-office roles by 2030.<\/p>\n
Mr Winters had told media on making the announcement that \u201cit\u2019s not cost cutting \u2013 it\u2019s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we\u2019re putting in\u201d.<\/p>\n
The comments attracted widespread criticism from shareholders, employees and across social media \u2013 including from former Singaporean president Halimah Yacob.<\/p>\n
In a post on her Facebook page, she said: \u201cIt\u2019s disturbing to read workers described as \u2018lower-value human capital\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
FTSE 100 listed Standard Chartered is understood to employ around 82,000 people, with most of these in back-office roles.<\/p>\n
It is the latest firm to cut back its staff numbers in favour of increased automation and adoption of new technologies.<\/p>\n
The bank\u2019s job cuts are part of a fresh strategy from Mr Winters aimed at improving profitability across the lender, which has significant operations across Asia.<\/p>\n
Standard Chartered said it hopes the plan will boost its return on tangible equity (RoTE) \u2013 a profit measure used by the bank \u2013 to more than 15% by 2028, representing a three percentage point increase from 2025.<\/p>\n
It also aims to bring its cost-to-income ratio lower on the back of its renewed efficiency drive.<\/p>\n
The bank said it hopes changes will drive productivity improvements to help raise income per employee by around 20% by 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The boss of Standard Chartered has rowed back on comments suggesting artificial intelligence would replace \u201clower-value human capital\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596030,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,203724,39952,203725,119401,9788,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-596029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-bill-winters","tag-human-capital","tag-media-coverage","tag-press-association","tag-standard-chartered","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596029\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}