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- Saul Van Beurden thinks employers and employees share responsibility for AI adoption.
- Wells Fargo doesn't mandate AI use; instead, it aims to generate "grassroots enthusiasm."
- Van Beurden said employees need new skills to stay competitive for both redeployment and new jobs.
Saul Van Beurden is the man helping Wells Fargo confront a question hanging over banks of every size: What happens to jobs in the age of AI?
He and his central team can't, and shouldn't, figure out what an AI-ready Wells Fargo looks like alone. The bank must teach employees skills to stay competitive in a changing industry, and they must choose to learn them, Van Beurden said.
"You cannot deny things," Van Beurden, who is the head of AI and the co-CEO of consumer banking and lending, told Business Insider. "But how do you make it a thing where everybody has a role to play and takes their own accountability and responsibility?"
The bank is leaning on AI literacy programs and demos, among other things, to hopefully inspire "grassroots enthusiasm." The goal is to make employees comfortable enough with the technology that they can be redeployed if their jobs change, or competitive in the job market if they leave Wells Fargo, he said. Wells Fargo doesn't mandate AI usage, even as it bets the technology will help supercharge its growth following the Federal Reserve's decision to lift a $1.95 trillion asset cap.
Van Beurden thinks that fluency starts outside the office. He's trying to build an agent to help pull documents for his 2026 tax returns, and believes it's crucial for employees to use AI in their personal lives, too.
"It's really important to have that personal usage, to understand the power of what it can do. And then we are enabling that and allowing that to happen at the workplace," he said.
Still, Van Beurden emphasized that everyone needs to "stay cognitive," since AI could generate all of our ideas if we let it. He suspects that most college students are comfortable with technology but should invest time in activities like reading or playing chess. Staying sharp, he thinks, will help them in what's broadly a brutal job market.
Wells' workforce, like many of its competitors, is already changing because of AI. The bank's CEO, Charlie Scharf, said in November that it will probably "have less head count as we look forward," and added in December that generative AI has already made engineers up to 35% more productive.
Van Beurden didn't say whether the bank would need 30% fewer engineers as a result or whether it would necessarily alter hiring, leaving it at, "it's a great question." Instead, he said that growth and head count aren't always one-to-one.
"How great is it to grow without the need to hire people, because you have created the capacity to take on more clients, to take on more customers with the same amount of people?" he said, calling AI the "ideal tool" for that growth. Wells Fargo recorded $21.3 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter, up 4% year over year; revenue in its consumer bank, which Van Beurden oversees, rose 7% year over year.
The leaders of other big banks have also said that AI will likely eliminate some jobs and slow hiring, both publicly and in internal memos. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has said his bank has "huge redeployment plans."
Efficiency promises and big technology budgets aside, the head count cuts haven't yet materialized at most banks. Around 60% of 240 financial services CEOs surveyed by EY said they expect AI investments to maintain or boost their head count this year.
