Bluerating | March 2025
The effects of Artificial Intelligence are being felt: the Spanish startup Tuio has caused insurance stocks to plummet on Wall Street and penalized the sector index, while Altruist has hit the shares of asset management groups.
A Morgan Stanley analysis raises a worrying alarm about employment in the European banking sector, predicting significant cuts due to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalization.
According to this analysis, approximately 212,000 jobs in the European banking sector (equivalent to approximately 10% of the workforce of 35 major institutions) could disappear by 2030. The cuts are driven by banks’ need to improve efficiency, with estimates of productivity gains of up to 30% thanks to generative AI.
The cuts will be concentrated primarily in core services, including back-office, middle-office, risk management, and compliance; in addition to AI, the continued closure of physical branches in favor of online services is contributing to workforce restructuring.
Although the main concern concerns Europe, the trend is global. In the United States, Morgan Stanley has also planned reductions in its wealth management division, while other banks, such as Goldman Sachs, have attributed the cuts to AI.
A massive and immediate decline in staffing in 2026 could be partially avoided if companies manage to maintain high profitability, but pressure for digital restructuring remains high.
The staff reductions are not limited to Europe. A year ago, a Bloomberg report made similar predictions for Wall Street banks.
All this is generating a lot of noise and tension in Italy, especially following Black Wednesday for financial advisory services: on February 11th, the stock prices of our national champions—Azimut, Banca Generali, Fineco, and Mediolanum—saw their prices drop dramatically.
William Shakespeare would say much ado about nothing; it’s well-established that valuable financial advice is based on a relationship of trust between the client and their banker, thanks to what’s called “customer intimacy”: a solid and personalized relationship between people who share needs, emotions, and values.
Financial advisors, private bankers, and bank managers, however, must watch their backs and avoid underestimating the phenomenon: Artificial Intelligence will bring greater efficiency, transparency, and accessibility.
There will certainly be a selective breeding ground among financial advisors, private bankers, and bank managers: only the best, those most responsive to change, and those who know how to listen to clients and adapt to new market paradigms will survive.
It’s an obstacle course; the winner will be the one who can run the fastest and avoid stumbling, knowing that the value of financial advice certainly won’t change, but its rules of engagement certainly will.
Nicola Ronchetti