Regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore have sought clarification from Standard Chartered after chief executive Bill Winters said the global lender intends to replace "lower-value human capital" with technology, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.
The comment was raised during talks with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Wednesday, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority asked Standard Chartered to explain the remark, the sources said. Regulators queried the bank about how planned job reductions would affect their local markets, with the HKMA specifically asking whether the bank was using artificial intelligence as a pretext to reduce staff numbers.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore did not immediately reply to a request for comment. An HKMA spokesperson told Reuters that the authority "regularly engages with authorized institutions on a wide range of matters," and declined to provide further comment.
The regulatory scrutiny follows Standard Chartered's announcement on Tuesday that it is looking to cut more than 7,000 positions over the next four years. Winters' reference to replacing "lower-value human capital" with technology led him subsequently to seek to calm staff concerns about the bank's approach to workforce change.
In the days after those remarks, leaders at several of the world's largest banks publicly addressed how artificial intelligence could reshape the financial sector. HSBC chief executive Georges Elhedery said the disruptive technology will both eliminate and create particular roles and encouraged staff to accept change rather than resist it. Meanwhile, JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg News in an interview that his bank plans to hire more AI specialists and fewer traditional bankers.
The exchanges with regulators and the broader industry discussion come amid a wave of commentary by senior bank executives on the role of AI in operations and workforce planning. Standard Chartered has been pressed to clarify how those strategic moves will be applied in specific jurisdictions and what implications they carry for employees in those markets.