Key points
- Singapore Bank has about 8,000-9,000 temporary and contract workers
- The reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition: Bank’s spokesperson
- The bank did not provide how many jobs would be cut in Singapore
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s biggest bank has said it likely to cut 4,000 roles over the next three years as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on more work currently done by humans.
BBC cited a spokesperson of DBS as saying, “The reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition as temporary and contract roles roll off over the next few years”.
Some reports suggest that permanent staff are not expected to be affected by the cuts. The bank’s outgoing chief executive (CEO) Piyush Gupta also said it expects to create about 1,000 new AI-related jobs.
A first major bank
It makes the bank one of the first major banks to offer details on how AI will affect its operations.
The firm did not say how many jobs would be cut in Singapore or which roles would be affected.
DBS currently has between 8,000 and 9,000 temporary and contract workers. The bank employs a total of around 41,000 people, BBC reported.
Last year, the bank CEO said DBS had been working on Artificial Intelligence for over a decade.
“We today deploy more than 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed S$1bn in 2025,” he said.
BBC reported that Gupta is set to leave the company at the end of March. Current deputy chief executive Tan Su Shan will replace him.
AI to affect 40pc of jobs worldwide
The current proliferation of AI technology has put its benefits and risks under the spotlight, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saying in previous year that it is set to affect about 40 per cent of all jobs across the world.
The IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva stated that “in most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality”.
BBC reported in 2024 that the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey said that AI will not be a “mass destroyer of jobs” and human workers will learn to work with new technologies.
Bailey was of the view that while there are risks with AI, “there is great potential with it”.
