Barclays has announced it expects to have cut around 5,000 jobs by the end of 2026, as the banking group increasingly turns to artificial intelligence (AI) to drive operational efficiency.
The figure represents approximately 5% of its entire global workforce, which stood at around 93,000 employees at the close of 2025. Some 1,000 of those positions were eliminated during the first half of 2026, with the remaining cuts spread across the second half of the year.
Redundancies concentrated in operational roles
The vast majority of the redundancies are concentrated in operational and functional roles throughout the organisation. The bank has embraced AI to streamline certain working processes, enabling it to reduce headcount in areas such as software development.
Group chief executive CS Venkatakrishnan, widely known within the bank as Venkat, described the move as "a result of the investments which we've made into technology over a number of years and which we continue to make".
Technology investment driving efficiency gains
Venkat said the technology investment centred on "modernising our platforms and harmonising our systems and having simpler and better processes". "That is driving the bulk of the efficiency gains that you've seen so far," he said.
"AI has an important role to play and may have a more important role to play in the future. I've often said that it is the icing on the cake – it's not the cake – because you need to do the infrastructure build to get the benefits of AI. Where the infrastructure is modern, we've been applying it here."
Barclays is approaching the conclusion of a three-year strategy aimed at enhancing performance, which has included significant cost reductions and bolstering its technology infrastructure.
Cost savings and financial results
During the third quarter, the firm delivered around £200 million in "structural cost actions", forming part of approximately £600 million achieved throughout the year. This is roughly twice what it had anticipated accomplishing earlier in the year.
The majority of the cost reductions originated from the UK retail bank, though a portion also came from its investment bank. Barclays said it has approximately £300 million worth of additional savings earmarked for the final three months of the year.
This follows the banking group reporting a pre-tax profit of £2.3 billion for the three months ending in September, representing a 12% increase compared with the same period last year. Revenue rose across its UK retail and corporate banks, alongside its wealth management division and investment bank.
Budget speculation and bank taxes
The financial results emerge less than a week before Chancellor John Healey delivers his autumn Budget statement, amid speculation that he is mulling higher taxes on banks to generate revenue for the Treasury.
When questioned about the speculation, Venkat said he had made his stance on bank taxes "very clear", having previously highlighted that the UK banking sector faces a higher tax burden than other nations. "We are already a bank which makes a lot of our money outside the UK so this is not a question of a financial hit to us – it's bearable. It's a question of proportion and it's a question of market signalling. But I deeply respect the responsibilities that the Chancellor bears and he has our full support and backing."
