With students graduating from US tech universities last year receiving a flood of job offers from major Wall Street banks as soon as they received their diplomas, it’s fair to say their peers across the Atlantic are more open to acquiring the talent they need to navigate the AI boom.
But it seems that European financial centres are beginning to realise the need for AI talent.
A new study into AI capabilities in the banking industry has revealed that UK banks are accelerating adoption ahead of their competitors.
According to consulting firm Evident, the number of AI-related roles being advertised by UK banks will grow by 12% in the first three months of 2024, faster than the rest of Europe and the US.
Deutsche Bank and Santander are leading the demand for AI-savvy workers in Europe, with Barclays, HSBC and BNP Paribas also investing in AI talent: Between October 2023 and April 2024, HSBC has 30% more AI-related job openings than other European banks.
Evident’s AI Index tracks banks’ success in embracing technology through measures of talent, innovation, leadership and transparency, and the latest index shows that only European bank UBS ranks among the top 10 banks globally for AI readiness.
Critics will point out that the arrangement is the result of combined resources following the bank’s emergency acquisition of Credit Suisse.
“After waves of brutal layoffs, banks are seeing AI investments as a panacea that will deliver much-needed productivity gains from their remaining workforce,” Evident co-founder and CEO Alexandra Mousavizadeh said in a statement.
US Leads
Stories about US banks getting ahead of their British and European counterparts in the AI boom are as familiar as US tech companies getting ahead of their transatlantic rivals.
talk luck Evident’s Mousavizadeh said at the AI Symposium in June that the U.S. bank made a conscious decision to become “AI first” early on in a major technological advancement that led to the creation of labs, the publication of research and the efforts of dedicated AI adoption teams.
It also sparked an arms race among US banks for top talent, with Goldman Sachs being a big early loser, seeing 60 of its employees leave for banks like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.
Mousavizadeh says there has also been a big effort to recruit talent directly from universities.
Nigel Moden, EY’s financial services banking and capital markets leader for EMEIA, said Europe, meanwhile, has historically been less used to the convergence of technology and the financial sector than the US.
It may also be hard to convince computer science students to avoid the path of people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and jump into finance.
But the latest data suggests that things are changing, with the UK gradually closing the gap created early on by the US.
EY’s Moden predicts that large-scale AI adoption in Europe will begin around the end of 2025, once banks have got their regulatory environment in order.
After all, it may not be a bad thing that the UK lagged behind the US in the early days of the AI boom.
Moden doesn’t believe there’s a big gap yet in AI capabilities among US banks, suggesting they are simply experimenting on a larger scale – which could give UK companies an opportunity to compete for talent in the future.
“If you’re HSBC, Barclays or ING, it might not be a bad strategy to hire someone who has worked at a big US bank for a few years and learned how to do the business,” EY’s Moden said.
