Wells Fargo's Mike Mayo expects automation to kill off 100,000 banking jobs: 'It's really a swap to bots from bankers'

Stephen Jones

Fri, October 1, 2021, 

100,000 banking jobs could be lost over the next 5 years, say Wells Fargo. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• 100,000 banking jobs could be lost to automation, a Wells Fargo report said.

• MD Mike Mayo told Bloomberg that "it's really a swap to bots from bankers."

• Back office and low-paying roles are more likely to be affected, the report said, per Bloomberg.

• See more stories on Insider's business page.

Wells Fargo predicts automation could cut as many as a 100,000 banking jobs over the next five years.

Clients of the bank were sent a 110-page report late on Monday detailing the potential impact of digitization on Wall Street and it's workers, Bloomberg reported. On Thursday, Mike Mayo, Wells Fargo's managing director, appeared on Bloomberg TV to discuss the report's findings.

"It's really a swap to bots from bankers," Mayo told Bloomberg's Emily Chang. "Developers are the new bankers. The chief technology officers at banks are now some of the most important people at banks."

Mayo predicted that two-thirds of the cuts would be in back-office jobs. A third would hit front-office roles, which typically are more client facing, he said.

The client report suggested lower-paying roles were more likely to be affected, per Bloomberg.

Mayo said that tech would also create new roles, partially offsetting some of the losses, but didn't say how many.

Tech will help banks become more efficient than they have been before, Mayo said, by allowing them to modernize call centres, back offices, and branches. Swapping to cloud and other third-party storage would also help, he said.

Banks need to automate in order to keep up with fintech, big tech, retail, and others, Mayo said. This would benefit customers, who increasingly favor online or digital-only banking, he said.

Mayo admitted that the industry was struggling to compete with tech companies in the war for talent. "The competition for tech talent has never been more fierce and banks are bearing some of the brunt of that," he said.

In a note sent in May, Mayo and other Wells Fargo analysts predicted that as many as 200,000 jobs could be shed within a decade as a result of tech adoption, according to Bloomberg.