Barclays plans to cut about 5,000 jobs – roughly 5% of its workforce – during 2026 as the British bank uses AI and other technology to reduce fixed costs and improve returns.
Chief Financial Officer Anna Cross said 1,000 positions have already been eliminated and the remaining 4,000 cuts are expected by year-end. About 60% of the reductions will affect support functions, including software-development roles, Reuters reported.
The disclosure is one of the clearest large-company examples of AI and automation being tied to a material workforce reduction outside the technology industry. Barclays has been expanding its use of Anthropic’s Claude across operations and client services, but the bank did not identify which tools or automated workflows account for individual job cuts.
The reductions were announced with Barclays’ third-quarter results. Pretax profit rose 12% from a year earlier to £2.3 billion, or about $3.1 billion, but missed analysts’ forecasts after fixed-income trading revenue fell 19%. Equities revenue rose 47%.
The concentration of cuts in support functions indicates that the first effects may fall on employees who build and operate internal systems, not only on routine administrative roles. However, Barclays did not disclose the number of positions attributable specifically to AI, the expected annual savings or whether affected work will disappear, be consolidated or move to outside providers.