Why AI isn’t coming for your banking job

Across all industries, employees are worried about AI. A whopping 75% of workers are concerned about AI making certain jobs obsolete, and 65% are concerned about AI taking their job, according to a survey from consulting firm EY.

Bank employees, in particular, may have good reason to be concerned. More than half (52%) of entry level positions at banks are set to be impacted by generative AI, according to Gartner research.

But despite the buzz that AI has generated in banking, for most bank workers, not much has changed yet. So why hasn’t AI been that disruptive to community bank jobs? According to Tim Bates, professor of practice at the University of Michigan’s College of innovation and Technology, the use of AI has everything to do with how comfortable people are with using technology. Right now, the customers of community banks and credit unions tend to be older — 57% of community bank customers are over the age of 55 — and still overwhelmingly prefer to interact with a human rather than a robot.

“I don’t think it’s technology, it’s us,” Bates says. “When you have a problem and call a support desk, some people still hit 0 to get a human. They don’t want to talk to the AI.”

 

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