HSBC to Axe Up to 70% of UK Wealth Advisers as AI Push Reverses Two-Year Hiring Drive
HSBC to Axe Up to 70% of UK Wealth Advisers as AI Push Reverses Two-Year Hiring Drive #
HSBC is planning to cut as many as 70% of financial adviser roles in its UK wealth management division and roughly half of its management and specialist positions there, as part of a restructuring tied to the bank’s expanded use of artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the plans, first reported by the Financial Times.
The bank is currently consulting with affected staff on the proposed reductions, with departures expected by the end of October. One person close to the matter described the scale as “deep, wide and brutal,” with near-entire teams facing redundancy. HSBC does not publicly disclose the headcount of its UK wealth unit, though the bank is understood to employ hundreds of relationship managers nationally.
The cuts reverse a hiring push from two years ago, when the bank was expanding the same division, which at the time numbered around 400 relationship managers, with plans to bring on hundreds more. Chief Executive Georges Elhedery, who took the role in 2024, has made AI central to a wider effort to cut costs and simplify operations. The bank has already cut roughly $1.5 billion in costs ahead of its own schedule.
Elhedery addressed the direction at HSBC’s investor day in May, telling staff they needed to embrace AI-driven change rather than resist it and warning that “generative AI will destroy certain jobs.” In July, he described the approach being applied to the wealth unit: AI tools are being rolled out to remaining relationship managers to generate market insights and personalised investment recommendations faster than human processes alone allow.
The restructuring does not include HSBC’s private bank, which serves the bank’s highest-net-worth clients. The expected model would push a larger share of standardised products and services through digital channels while keeping human advisers for clients with more complex financial needs.
The scale of the reductions illustrates a question running through the wealth management industry: whether AI makes existing advisers more productive or simply replaces them. HSBC appears to have concluded that the efficiency gains are large enough to reduce the size of the human workforce rather than maintain headcount with better tools. Other large banks, including Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, have also trimmed operations as machine-learning deployments expand, though the proposed reductions in a single business unit at HSBC are larger than most reported in the industry recently.
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