‘It’s going to impact work’: Lloyds to cut £2bn in costs with AI
The boss of Lloyds Banking Group is preparing to wield the axe on its cost base as the bank doubles down on AI ambitions.
Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of the financial services giant, said AI is “going to impact work” and “require us to reskill people and hire new people” as he revealed a new strategic plan for the blue-chip lender.
Nunn is targeting around £2bn in cost savings by 2030 as part of a new plan dubbed Accelerate 2030.
The banking chief is aiming to reduce the group’s overall cost-to-income ratio to less than 45 per cent in 2030, which will mark a drop from 50 per cent in 2026.
He said the bank had already achieved around £2bn of “growth cost savings” in its previous five-year strategy by reshaping its office footprint, improving technology and “operational and efficiency changes”.
“Those kinds of levers will continue in front of us,” Nunn said, without sharing details on whether this would lead to more job losses.
Across the industry, bank bosses have been blunt about the impact of AI on the jobs market.
Georges Elhedery, HSBC’s chief executive, said AI will “destroy certain jobs and will create new jobs,” meanwhile JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon has said it will “reduce jobs down the road”.
Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley predicted in May that AI-driven job losses across the European banking sector could reach 400,000, double its initial forecasts.
Lloyds to ‘follow customers’ on branch network
“We see AI… in a pretty balanced way,” Nunn said, adding around 50 per cent of the bank’s work with the technology would be about “differentiating and extending what we do for customers into new areas.”
“The other 50 per cent is around helping our colleagues do their tasks more effectively and more efficiently,” he said.
The bank cut 1,600 roles in January 2024 and had since made several more rounds of redundancies.
In September last year, it emerged the bank was putting its weakest performing five per cent, amounting to around 3,000 roles, at risk of redundancy.
Lloyds’ branch network has also been ripe for the chop as part of the digital overhaul. The bank is set to close some 232 branches in 2026.
Nunn said that in-person sites would be an “important part of our proposition” going forward, but added the firm would “follow the customer and our customer data around our branches”.
Lloyds integrates UK fintech Curve
The group will invest more than £13bn in its digital services, which will include the launch of a new smart wallet. Lloyds snapped up Apple Pay rival Curve in November 2025, with the latter’s services now integrated into the group.
The Curve brand will continue to take in new customers with no changes to the brand. City PM understands Curve founder Shachar Bialick will be stepping down from his role as chief executive of the fintech.
The new strategy is also set to support Lloyds’ ambition around tokenised deposits, which refers to regular bank money being transformed into smart, digital tokens allowing instant movement and automated rules.
Lloyds completed the UK’s first public blockchain transaction using tokenised deposits earlier this year to purchase UK government bonds with an instant settlement.
Nunn said he was looking to leverage blockchain technology in a bid to slash the waiting time for mortgage approvals to around three days.
City PM revealed in May the bank had entered a partnership with Google to build an internal platform for AI agents.
Last year, Lloyds put its chief executive and top bosses through an AI bootcamp at Cambridge University in a bid to ramp up its adoption across the company.