Standard Chartered has announced plans to cut about 7,800 jobs by 2030 as part of a major restructuring that will see the lender rely more on artificial intelligence to run its operations.

The decision was unveiled on May 19 by chief executive Bill Winters during a strategy update to investors in Hong Kong, where the bank also outlined new targets to improve profitability and efficiency.

The London-headquartered bank said the cuts will affect more than 15 percent of its back-office and corporate roles across its global network, marking one of the biggest workforce changes in its recent history.

“We are scaling practical uses of automation, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence to streamline processes, improve decision‑making, and enhance both client service and internal efficiency,” the bank said in a statement.

The roles expected to be affected are largely in internal support functions, including human resources, risk management, compliance, and other administrative operations that support the bank’s daily activities.

These roles are considered easier to automate because they involve repetitive tasks such as document processing, transaction matching, regulatory checks, and reporting.

Standard Chartered employs about 80,000 people globally, with roughly 51,000 to 52,000 working in support roles, meaning the planned cuts will fall mainly on these back-office positions.

The bank has not specified which countries will be hardest hit, but it runs large back-office centers in India, China, Malaysia, and Poland, as well as hubs in cities such as Bengaluru, Shenzhen, and Warsaw.

Despite the scale of the cuts, Winters insisted the move should not be seen as a cost-cutting exercise.

“It is not cost-cutting. It is replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and investment capital we’re putting in,” he said.

The job cuts are directly tied to the bank’s growing use of artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced data systems to handle tasks previously done by staff.

Winters added that such technologies are especially effective at handling repetitive tasks such as document processing, transaction matching, regulatory checks, and reporting, which constitute the bulk of back-office work.

The bank said it would try to redeploy some workers into other parts of the business and invest in retraining, although it did not provide details on how many employees might be retained.