By Alexander Saeedy
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan believes the banking industry will employ fewer people over time as machine learning and artificial intelligence take over how banks process payments and manage client finances.
Even though Bank of America shrank its retail business staff from around 100,000 employees to 60,000 over the last decade, Moynihan said that consumer deposits have grown by some $500 billion. The volume of transactions processed through the bank is also “lightyears bigger, he said.
Were basically running on a neutral headcount, Moynihan said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. The expense base we run the whole company on today, around $64 billion, is about the same as it was in 2015.
While human workers will likely contribute less and less to each new dollar of revenue, Moynihan said the remaining employees will be paid a lot more than previous generations since they will be more focused on value-added work.
Bank of America employees are still expected to work Monday to Friday; Moynihan said the banks teams want to work five days a week. By contrast, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has predicted that artificial intelligence could result in shorter workweeks.