Dive Brief:
An Accenture CEO said his firm saved one of its banking clients $100 million by automating jobs in its compliance division, according to Business Insider.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Richard Lumb, CEO of financial services at Accenture said, “one client is saving $100 million a year [from automating large areas of the back office in compliance].”
Because compliance is a huge concern for financial institutions, “banks are now starting to look at how to be more efficient and effective with data analytics in areas such as money laundering,” Lumb said, adding that some of the biggest banks could have up to 25,000 people working in compliance.
Dive Insight:
Concerns about job losses are on the rise, as AI and automation appear poised to take on a large numbers of tasks over the next few years. Lumb said automation is also happening within Accenture, replacing 17,000 jobs were replaced over the last year and a half. However no one at Accenture lost their job, Lumb said, because the company was able to retrain employees to perform new jobs.
Preventing large numbers of job losses as automation takes root means companies need to start focusing on retraining now. A new Accenture report about automation suggests the UK could “reduce the share of jobs at risk of being fully automated to less than 6% percent by the year 2035 if skills are reallocated.”
A recent McKinsey report found replacing workers altogether with automation could only work in less than 5% of occupations.
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