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Human Bankers Are Losing To Robots as Nordea Sets a New Standard (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the coming-soon-to-a-bank-near-you dept.

Something interesting happened in Swedish finance last quarter. The only big bank that managed to cut costs also happens to be behind one of the industry's boldest plans to replace humans with automation. From a report: Nordea Bank AB, whose Chief Executive Officer Casper von Koskull says his industry might only have half its current human workforce a decade from now, is cutting 6,000 of those jobs. Von Koskull says the adjustment is the only way to stay competitive in the future, with automation and robots taking over from people in everything from asset management to answering calls from retail clients. While many in the finance industry have struggled to digest that message, the latest set of bank results in Sweden suggests that executives in one of the planet's most technologically advanced corners are drawing inspiration from Nordea. At SEB AB, CEO Johan Torgeby now says that "whatever can be automated will be automated."

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. whatever can be automated MUST be automated by mi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    whatever can be automated will be automated

    As it should be. No one becomes a bank-teller, because they like it. Like hundreds of other jobs, it needs to be done, pleasant or not... We are all better off as these jobs are replaced by machinery.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  2. A glimpse from the past by mi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're going to see variations on that headline over and over from here on out.

    We've been seeing it since before most of today's newspapers first printed. How many coachmen lost their jobs to a steam locomotive? How many computers lost their jobs to, ahem, computers? How many milkmen had to look for another vocation with the invention of pasteurization process and of refrigerators?

    And speaking of "headlines" — you do know, that putting together the printing matrices was a manual process too, don't you? The expression "freedom of the press" and "stop the presses" is still around, even though there neither the actual presses any more — and some publications stopped wasting paper completely?

    Civilization evolves, lamenting the disappearances of some professions is stupid...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.