Artificial Intelligence | The artificial job killer

Photo: dpa/Boris Roessler “Whether you love it or fear it: AI is here.” Enthusiasm sounds different. But the director of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva, warned of a deterioration in the global economic situation in the run-up to this year's annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok. A central theme of the conference was the “disruptive” (destructive) influence of artificial intelligence on the global labor market.

Georgieva compared the impact of AI to a “slow-rolling tsunami” that will particularly affect young graduates as they enter the job market. According to the IMF estimate, around 40 percent of all jobs worldwide could be “changed, devalued or eliminated” through AI. In advanced economies, i.e. in the Global North, this value is as high as 60 percent.

In the MINT professions in mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology in Germany, around four out of ten skilled workers report that colleagues have left the company for AI-related reasons in the past twelve months. This is the result of a survey by the opinion research institute Yougov.

It remains to be seen which professions will disappear and whether they will disappear at all. AI technology is too new and the business ideas associated with it are too vague. Financial services jobs are considered particularly at risk. Well over a million people work in this sector of the economy. Banks, insurance companies and investment companies are pushing AI forward on two levels: as a growth lever in customer business and as an efficiency lever in human resources.

67 percent of board members and managing directors see the customer experience and digital channels such as apps, small programs on cell phones, as having the greatest effect on sales. More than half of top managers expect that AI and the associated automation will reduce personnel requirements by 30 percent by 2029.

These are the results of the study “Banks and Financial Services 2026” by Horváth. The international management consultancy in Stuttgart interviewed in detail what the company said was a representative selection of board and management members from credit institutions and other financial service providers.

The Horváth survey also shows that AI is still in its infancy. Although only 12 percent of the companies surveyed have not yet started introducing AI (2025: 24 percent), only a few financial service providers have fully integrated the new technology and are deriving financial benefits from it.

The industry sees the lack of data as the biggest hurdle, followed by data security. “A cleanly prepared database and the protection of highly sensitive customer data are the prerequisites for being able to use AI applications responsibly in regulated banking,” says Frank Schindera, partner at Horváth.

For AI machine learning, for example, customers' personal data must be released and fed into the AI ​​systems. At the same time, savings banks and traditional banks feel the hot breath of digital fin-techs on their necks. These are technologies for digital financial management, such as N26, Revolut and Trade Republic. “Competition from Fin-Techs requires speed, the handling of customer data requires care,” emphasizes Schindera and reassures: banks and financial institutions have so far resolved this area of ​​tension in favor of care.

The industry is currently investing primarily in technology. IT costs rose by at least 5.5 percent, almost three times as much as personnel costs. Although the number of employees continues to rise. For the planned job cuts, 56 percent of companies cite the “strategic realignment” as the reason, i.e. the greater focus on technology and automation through AI. 31 percent of financial companies believe that their employees' existing skills no longer match changing business requirements.

Combined with AI, the Internet, computers and robots are becoming increasingly useful in replacing humans. People in finance and similar office jobs are therefore considered to be particularly at risk. The researchers at the Institute for Labor Market and Occupational Research (IAB) in Nuremberg are continually determining the “substitutability potential” of professions through AI. According to this, 78 percent of the activities of bank clerks can be automated – as things stand today.

However, whether it is automated depends on many aspects. For example, it may be that a person works more economically or more flexibly than any machine. Because AI also costs. Companies are currently paying 200 or 300 euros a day per employee for sophisticated AI deployment. But how the prices for AI applications will develop cannot be reliably predicted today.

So AI doesn’t have to be a job killer. Occupations in the skilled trades, in physical services and helper jobs such as parcel delivery appear to be hardly at risk anyway. Labor market researchers and economists at the International Monetary Fund also believe it is more likely that jobs will change than disappear completely. At the same time, new fields of activity will emerge.

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