Artificial intelligence will render entire categories of banking jobs "obsolete" within a decade, according to Brett King, a futurist and author who spoke at the First Abu Dhabi Bank and IMD Competitiveness Summit 2026 in Abu Dhabi on Monday. King didn't mince words: banks are heading toward a future where human employees become the exception, not the rule.
The Agentic Shift
Speaking to The National on the sidelines of the summit, King said the skill set in banks is going to shift dramatically toward "agentic operation" — a model where AI agents, not people, handle most tasks. "There'll be a lot of new employees in the bank over the next 10 years but they'll all be agents," he said. "You are going to restructure from human plus AI operation. Some people within the bank can be retrained to support those roles. Other roles will become more obsolete."
The scale of the transformation he's describing isn't theoretical. Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said in July that AI had already eliminated 30 to 40 per cent of headcount in some of the bank's departments. The company outlined plans to invest about $20 billion in technology this year. In January, Amazon announced 16,000 job cuts worldwide as it expanded the adoption of AI tools for efficient operations. King's projection for JP Morgan Chase is stark: "A couple of years ago, they had 160,000 employees globally. By the end of the next decade, by the 2040s, I'd be surprised if they had a few thousand employees."
The Efficiency Argument
King's view is that this isn't just about cost-cutting — it's about the fundamental nature of banking work. "Just understand that 99 per cent of banking can be automated and agentic AI-based capabilities is the way we do that," he said. "So, in the agentic world of banking, humans just slow things down and are unproductive." He said banks would become much more cost effective and operationally efficient through AI use, and added that banks were projected to be more profitable as staffing costs went down.
For the Mena region, King sees a silver lining in this upheaval. "What's most important is we'll have healthy financial inclusion because the cost of banking goes down and accessibility to financial services improves dramatically," he said. He added that every individual in the middle-income bracket will have access to private banking-style capabilities within a very short period of time through AI.
Regional Performance and Innovation
Speaking at the same summit, Hischam El Agamy, executive director of IMD Business School, said the Middle East and Africa must develop unique banking models rather than replicating western frameworks because of distinct demographic shifts. He said 60 per cent of the world's youth will live in the Mena region by 2024, fuelling rising demand for innovation.
Speakers also highlighted the UAE's economic performance and its position in this year's IMD World Competitiveness Ranking report. The UAE was listed as the world's fifth most competitive nation, with the Emirates coming first globally for economic performance, bureaucracy, adaptability of government policy, employment, international experience, national culture and quality of air transport. The UAE was the region's top-ranked country overall in the report, which assessed the performance of 70 countries against 67 criteria. Other countries in the region performed well, with Qatar ranked at 11, Saudi Arabia 13, Bahrain 20, Oman 25 and Kuwait at 31.
Why This Matters:
The banking sector's AI transformation represents one of the clearest tests of whether advanced economies can manage technological disruption without creating mass unemployment. King's projections — if accurate — mean millions of banking jobs worldwide will disappear within 15 years, replaced by AI agents that work faster and cheaper. The question isn't whether this will happen, but whether governments and institutions can retrain displaced workers at the scale and speed required. For the Mena region, the stakes are different: with 60 per cent of the world's youth projected to live there, the region faces simultaneous pressures to create jobs for young people while adopting technologies that eliminate jobs. The UAE's top ranking in adaptability of government policy suggests at least one country is preparing for this collision. Whether retraining programs can keep pace with AI's advance remains the defining economic question of the next decade.