UBS Could Cut 30 Per Cent Of Staff Over Next Decade Due To Tech, Says CEO

Josh O'Neill

4 October 2017

, Germany's largest lender, who said that accountants could be replaced with automated machines as banks look to trim costs and make internal processes more efficient.

“In our bank, we have people doing work like robots,” he said. “Tomorrow, we will have robots behaving like people. It doesn't matter if we as a bank will participate in these changes or not – it is going to happen.”

He suggested, however, that by automating accounting processes, this would enable staff currently holding these roles to thoroughly analyse numbers and statistics produced by robots, rather than spend “three to four weeks” producing accounts themselves.

“If you take an accountant at the bank, a large part of their job is to produce numbers,” Cryan said. “Wouldn’t it be great, if machines could produce those numbers in just a few hours? Then accountants could analyse the numbers, form valid opinions what those numbers mean and not just produce them.”