Barclays expects to cut about 5,000 jobs by the end of 2026 as the British banking group intensifies its use of artificial intelligence and technology to streamline operations and push down costs.
The planned reductions represent roughly 5 per cent of the bank’s global workforce, which stood at about 93,000 employees at the end of 2025. Around 1,000 roles were eliminated in the first half of 2026, with the remaining cuts expected to take place during the second half of the year.
Most of the reductions will affect operational and functional positions across the business, highlighting how technology investment is increasingly reshaping the workforce of major financial institutions.
CS Venkatakrishnan, Barclays’ group chief executive, said the job cuts reflected the benefits of investments in technology made over several years, as the bank sought to improve productivity and reduce the amount of labour required for certain processes.
“This is a result of the investments which we’ve made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make,” he said.
The adoption of AI is allowing the bank to make some workflows more efficient and reduce the need for certain roles, including some developer positions. The shift underlines the growing pressure on financial services groups to demonstrate that spending on automation and digital infrastructure can translate into measurable savings.
For Barclays, the workforce reductions form part of a broader three-year strategy focused on improving performance, cutting expenses and strengthening its technological capabilities. The bank is approaching the end of that programme as it seeks to sustain profitability while controlling its cost base.
The scale of the planned cuts also illustrates the potential employment consequences of AI adoption in an industry where large numbers of workers carry out processes that can increasingly be automated or streamlined. While technology can help banks operate more efficiently, it also raises questions about the future demand for certain administrative, operational and technical roles.
Barclays has already made substantial progress on its cost-cutting programme. During the third quarter, it implemented about £200mn in what it described as “structural cost actions”, bringing the total for the year to roughly £600mn.
The savings were concentrated largely in its UK retail banking business, although its investment bank also contributed to the reductions.
The group plans to deliver a further £300mn or so in savings during the final three months of the year, extending the effort to simplify operations and improve efficiency.
The cost programme is taking place alongside stronger financial performance. Barclays reported pre-tax profit of £2.3bn for the three months to the end of September, a 12 per cent increase on the same period a year earlier.
The results suggest the bank is pursuing a dual objective: increasing earnings while continuing to reshape the organisation through cost reductions and technology investment.
The challenge will be to ensure that efficiency gains do not come at the expense of service quality, operational resilience or the expertise required to manage a complex global bank. As financial institutions expand their use of AI, the balance between productivity, workforce reductions and long-term investment is becoming an increasingly important measure of their strategies.
Barclays’ planned 5,000 job cuts offer a clear indication of how that transition is unfolding: technology is no longer simply supporting the bank’s operations, but increasingly determining how many people it needs to run them.
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