NatWest CEO Paul Thwaite: AI Is Coming for Some Banking Jobs
The conversation around artificial intelligence and employment has been simmering for years, but when the chief executive of one of the United Kingdom's largest banks stands at a public forum and openly acknowledges that AI will take over roles that currently exist, it marks a significant moment for the industry. That is precisely what happened when NatWest CEO Paul Thwaite addressed a business summit hosted by The Times in June 2025, delivering remarks that sent ripples through the financial services world.
Thwaite did not mince words. "In effect there will be roles that currently exist that absolutely to all intents and purposes [will be] delivered by AI," he stated plainly, according to a report by Finextra. While he stopped short of specifying whether NatWest's overall headcount would shrink as a result, the implication was clear: the bank's workforce is heading for a structural transformation driven by artificial intelligence.
What Did Paul Thwaite Actually Say — and What Did He Leave Out?
Thwaite's comments were notable as much for what he said as for what he chose not to say. He acknowledged the inevitability of AI displacement in specific roles but carefully avoided confirming any planned reduction in total employee numbers. This kind of measured language is increasingly common among banking executives who must balance investor enthusiasm for cost-efficiency gains through automation with the very real human and reputational consequences of large-scale layoffs.
The Daily Mail, which also covered Thwaite's remarks, offered an additional piece of context: NatWest is actively growing its headcount in roles related to software and AI. This suggests the bank's strategy is not simply about replacing workers but about redeploying talent toward technology-driven functions. In other words, the bank is not shrinking — it is reshaping. Whether that reshaping ultimately benefits existing employees or simply creates new roles for a different category of workers remains an open question.
A Trend Across the Entire Financial Services Sector
Thwaite's candor places NatWest within a much broader industry-wide movement. Financial services firms globally are accelerating their investments in AI at a pace that is difficult to overstate. According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report titled "Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race," a striking 85% of financial services and insurance companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue plan to increase their AI budgets over the next 12 months.
That statistic alone signals that what NatWest is doing is not an outlier strategy — it is the industry norm. Banks, insurers, and financial institutions of all sizes are committing serious capital to AI infrastructure, and the pressure to demonstrate return on that investment will inevitably push organizations toward identifying roles that can be automated or augmented.
Which Banking Functions Are AI Targeting First?
The PYMNTS Intelligence report goes further in identifying exactly which tasks are seeing the highest rates of AI adoption within financial services firms. The data reveals a clear pattern: AI is being deployed most aggressively in structured, back-office, and auditable functions rather than in client-facing or advisory roles — at least for now.
- Revenue recognition and accounting close — 65% of large financial firms are already using AI for this function, making it the most widely adopted use case in the sector.
- Credit risk assessment and scoring — 60% of firms have integrated AI into their credit evaluation processes, a development with profound implications for both speed and consistency in lending decisions.
- Sales forecasting and pipeline optimization — Also adopted by 60% of surveyed firms, this use case blends data analytics with predictive modeling to improve commercial performance.
The concentration of AI adoption in these areas is not accidental. Back-office functions tend to involve repetitive, rules-based processes that operate on clearly defined data inputs and outputs — exactly the type of work that current AI systems handle with high accuracy and at significantly lower cost than human labor. Compliance checks, transaction reconciliation, fraud pattern recognition, and loan underwriting all fall into this category of work that is ripe for automation.
What Does This Mean for Banking Employees?
For the hundreds of thousands of people currently employed in roles that fall within these categories, Thwaite's comments are a signal worth taking seriously. The question for individual workers is not whether AI will change their industry — that is already settled — but how quickly the change will arrive at their specific desk, and what skills will be valued in the bank of tomorrow.
The good news, if there is any, is that most banking leaders are framing AI adoption as a process of transition rather than elimination. The growth in AI-related and software engineering roles at NatWest suggests demand for people who can build, maintain, audit, and improve AI systems. Workers who proactively develop data literacy, prompt engineering knowledge, or AI governance skills will likely find themselves more insulated from displacement than those who do not.
There is also an argument to be made that AI will free human bankers from tedious, low-value tasks — freeing them to focus on relationship management, complex problem-solving, and the kinds of nuanced judgment calls that remain beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated language models. Whether banks actually invest in reskilling their existing workforce to fill those higher-value roles, or simply hire new talent while letting older employees go, will define the human cost of this transition.
The Broader Picture: AI Is Rewriting the Rules of Financial Services
Paul Thwaite is not the first banking CEO to acknowledge this reality, and he certainly will not be the last. As AI technology continues to mature and the competitive pressure to reduce operational costs intensifies, every major financial institution is being forced to confront the same fundamental question: which parts of our business need a human, and which parts merely needed one?
The answers emerging from boardrooms across London, New York, and beyond suggest that the list of tasks requiring human involvement is getting shorter. Credit decisioning, fraud detection, regulatory reporting, and even elements of customer service are all being handed, at least in part, to AI systems. The bank branch staffed entirely by human tellers is already an artifact of the past in many markets, and the AI-enabled back office may follow a similar trajectory far sooner than many workers expect.
What NatWest and its peers are navigating right now is not just a technology upgrade — it is a fundamental reimagining of what a bank looks like as an organization. Paul Thwaite's frank admission at The Times summit may have been brief, but it pointed toward a transformation that will play out over years and affect millions of people across the global financial services industry.