Barclays has put dozens of London jobs at risk with plans to move roles to India and use artificial intelligence (AI).
The British bank is planning to cut up to 50 staff from its internal advertising unit, moving the jobs offshore by the end of August.
Barclays will cut costs by slashing the jobs in London and rehiring a new team in India, where they will be supported by AI tools.
The cuts mark the latest effort by CS Venkatakrishnan, the chief executive of Barclays, to reduce spending as part of plans to cut the bank’s total costs by £2bn.
As part of the shake-up, Barclays plans to cut the entirety of its almost 20-strong copywriting team, which works out of the bank’s headquarters in Canary Wharf.
CS Venkatakrishnan, the chief executive of Barclays
CS Venkatakrishnan, the chief executive of Barclays, saw his pay packet more than double in February 2025 — Bess Adler/Bloomberg
Marketing workers were first informed of the overhaul at a meeting last July, attended by around 50 employees across the division whose jobs were put at risk by the initiative.
Barclays’ new copywriting team in India will be larger than its current one in London. However, the move is expected to result in reduced staffing costs overall due to lower wages.
Barclays currently has over 30,000 employees in India, with offices in cities including Mumbai and New Delhi.
Staff working from India will be expected to use AI to help them in their jobs, using the technology to write public-facing material for Barclays including advertising copy for the bank’s website.
Some staff inside the bank’s London-based marketing division have already been made redundant and left last year. Others will be offered jobs elsewhere in the bank, while some expect to have their contracts ended over the coming months.
The emergence of AI technologies has led to wider concerns about jobs, with the launch of a new legal chatbot by Anthropic last week causing a major downturn in stocks worldwide because of fears that major companies could be undercut by AI-powered rivals.
Software developers experienced sharp drops in their share prices amid concerns that demand for their products could fall if their customers start using cheaper AI tools instead. Advertising companies were also hit on fears much of their work could be automated.
Britain is currently suffering the worst impacts of the AI-driven disruption, with a study from Morgan Stanley in January showing the technology has led to the loss of more jobs than it has created in the UK.
Barclays’ wider cuts, announced in 2024, saw the bank vow to return £10bn to its shareholders via a mixture of dividends and share buyback initiatives.
Barclays’ share price has since increased by more than 180pc. The stock was lifted by strong results after it successfully capitalised on a combination of higher interest rates and global market turmoil caused by Donald Trump’s policies.