CEO who coldly vowed to replace ‘lower-value human capital’ with AI has been forced to walk back remarks after fierce backlash

The CEO of a leading British bank has been forced to walk back his controversial statement that he plans to replace ‘low-value human capital’ with artificial intelligence.

Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters has faced intense backlash for controversial comments he made to journalists in Hong Kong during the presentation of the bank’s latest financial targets, including plans to cut jobs for support staff by more than 15 per cent by 2030.

‘It’s not cost-cutting. In some cases, it means replacing lower-value human capital with the financial capital and investment capital we put in,” Winters said.

As anger grew over the comments and the prospect of more than 7,800 layoffs, Winters followed up with a memo to staff.

‘Many of you will have seen the media coverage following the investor event in Hong Kong, particularly around automation, artificial intelligence and workforce changes,’ Winters wrote in his note.

‘I know it can be disturbing when reduced to simple headlines or an out-of-context quote… Where roles disappear it reflects changes in the business, not the value of our people,’ he wrote.

Winter’s words reflect rapidly changing realities in the banking industry as AI firms continue to roll out automation tools to financial institutions, fueling fears about the future of white-collar jobs.

Winters took over as head of Standard Chartered in 2015 and has since focused on increasing cross-border transactions and services for affluent clients in Asia and the Middle East.

Winters and CFO Manus Costello pose after media briefing in Hong Kong

At a conference in 2024, Winters lamented the bank’s lagging stock performance compared to larger rivals including HSBC.

The bank’s shares have nearly tripled since then, driven by aggressive cost-cutting measures and rising profits; These gains can be further accelerated under its AI-focused strategy.

Winters said the bank plans to use artificial intelligence to reduce false positives when scanning transactions for evidence of financial crimes.

It also outlined plans to use technology to reduce manual compliance efforts tied to regulatory changes that have burdened the banking industry since the 2008 financial crisis.

‘Some roles will decline, others will grow and new ones will emerge,’ Winters wrote in an earlier memo to staff, adding that the bank would seek to redeploy and retrain workers while dealing with any redundancies with ‘respect and care’.

Among the bank’s 81,000 employees and 17,000 contract workers, the deepest cuts are expected to be seen in roles in human resources and risk and compliance.

But despite the softer tone in the earlier internal memo, Winters’ later comments to reporters appeared to dispel much of that goodwill.

Winters isn’t the only bank boss expecting major workforce reductions. Rival lender HSBC announced in March that it was focusing on comprehensive layoffs that could affect up to 20,000 employees.

Roles in the bank’s human resources, risk and compliance areas are expected to experience the deepest cuts

Winters isn’t the only bank boss expecting major workforce reductions. Rival lender HSBC said in March it was considering sweeping layoffs that could affect up to 20,000 employees.

The planned cuts — roughly 10 percent of the bank’s global workforce — are reportedly linked to a broader push to replace some human roles with artificial intelligence.

This has raised fears that other Wall Street giants will soon follow suit, with lenders such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence as they face pressure to cut costs.

HSBC’s finance chief Pam Kaur issued a stark warning at the Morgan Stanley conference, saying the bank was focusing on “the benefits we can get from artificial intelligence”. inflation‘ or increase efficiency.

The comments are in line with Georges Elhedery’s broader strategy to use AI to shrink the bank’s middle and back-office operations; Bloomberg reported that as many as 20,000 jobs — primarily non-customer-facing roles in global service centers — could be affected as a result.