London, 22 October 2026 — EBM Newsdesk Analysis — By Katie Winearls
Barclays will have cut about 5,000 jobs by the end of the year. That is roughly 5% of a global workforce that stood at about 93,000 at the end of 2025. Chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan said the cuts were “a result of the investments which we’ve made into technology over a number of years”. It is one of the clearest admissions yet from a major British bank that artificial intelligence is now replacing staff, not just helping them.
The bank delivered the news alongside strong results. Pre-tax profit for the third quarter rose 12% to £2.3bn, according to Yahoo Finance. Investors are seeing higher profits and fewer staff at the same time.
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SubscribeWhere the Cuts Fall
Most of the jobs going are operational and functional roles, the back-office work of processing, checking and administration. About 1,000 were cut in the first half of the year, so the pace has picked up sharply since the summer. Barclays also said AI is reducing the need for some technical staff, including software developers. That is a striking change for a bank that spent the last decade hiring engineers.
The cuts form part of Barclays’ three-year plan to lift returns through cost savings and technology, which is now nearing its end. The bank took about £200m of “structural cost actions” in the third quarter, part of roughly £600m this year, with another £300m planned for the final three months. Most of it has come from the UK retail bank, with a smaller share from the investment bank. Full figures are on Barclays’ investor relations site.
Part of a Wider Shake-Out
Barclays is not alone. HSBC has just completed its biggest senior banker cull since the financial crisis, and traditional lenders are under pressure from digital challengers. Revolut, valued at $115bn without lending much at all, runs on a fraction of the staff of a high-street bank.
The technology driving the cuts is improving fast. AI developers such as Anthropic are reporting huge revenue growth as businesses move from trial projects to full deployment. For banks, back-office processing is the easiest place to start.
It is also not the first time Barclays has broken from the pack. Last year it challenged the green investment consensus, and it is now among the first to tie AI directly to job numbers.
The Bottom Line
This is what AI looks like when it reaches a balance sheet: higher profits and 5,000 fewer people. Barclays has been more open than most, but every large European bank is running the same calculation. The political question for Britain is harder. Financial services carry the UK economy, which has been beating growth forecasts. If the sector’s response to AI is to shed jobs in Glasgow, Northampton and Knutsford, the gains will go to shareholders, not workers. Expect the other big banks to follow by spring.
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