Wells Fargo CEO Envisions AI Influencing Staffing Decisions

Wells Fargo’s CEO said artificial intelligence (AI) could potentially influence company decisions on staffing levels.

Speaking Tuesday (Dec. 9) at a Goldman Sachs-hosted conference, Charlie Scharf noted that his company has begun offering generative-AI tools to its engineers, making it 30% to 35% more efficient for them to write code. While it hasn’t led to job cuts, teams are more productive.

“We’re not as efficient as we should be without the benefits of AI,” said Scharf, whose comments were reported by Bloomberg News.

The CEO added that there are many other places where the banking giant will be able to determine how to use large language models to do things differently with fewer workers. Examples of areas where this could happen include compliance and legal matters, call-center work, producing pitch books in Wells Fargo’s investment-banking operation and writing credit memos for its commercial bank.

As Wells Fargo continues to reduce costs, it will likely report more severance expenses during the first quarter compared to the earlier part of the year, said Scharf. Bloomberg noted the company has been cutting jobs for years to boost efficiency, and had more than 210,000 employees at the end of September.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has examined the way AI in banking has entered its next era, one in which conversational interfaces have gone from simple Q&A bots to tools that can offer strategic insight and contextual counsel.

Crucially, the research found that 75% of bank customers want greater personalization and that embedded conversational AI could win back 72% of them by offering that tailored experience.

“Thus, cognitive banking is not just about automation — it’s about personal relevance, timing and trust,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Workers Say Fears About Gen AI Taking Their Jobs is Overblown” found that 54% of workers who were employed, looking for work or studying when surveyed said AI presented a “significant risk of widespread job displacement.”

This concern was more heightened among respondents familiar with generative AI platforms at 57% compared to those unfamiliar at 41%.

“Despite broad concern about general displacement, 38% of workers feared that generative AI could eventually lead to the elimination of their specific jobs,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. “This personal job fear was higher among those using generative AI at least weekly (50%) compared to unfamiliar users (24%).”

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