Finance Veteran Says AI Won’t Doom Junior Bankers

Junior bankers should not worry that their jobs are on the line because of AI, says Sopnendu Mohanty, the CEO of Global Finance & Technology Network, an advisory and investment firm.

Mohanty, 53, spent nearly two decades working at Citi, where he helped lead the bank’s global consumer lab network and programs. In 2015, he became the Singapore central bank’s first chief fintech officer.

He said AI, like the internet and smartphone, will help make bankers more productive. With AI, a single banker would be able to engage more clients, Mohanty told Business Insider.

“When I joined banking in 1997, my ability to reach out to customers was limited. Smartphones and call centers — all those came later,” he added.

Using AI will be a win-win situation for the banks and their junior hires, Mohanty said.

“Your productivity goes up, you are engaging more customers, you will enjoy better customer loyalty in the process,” he added.

Mohanty isn’t the only finance executive who said AI will help, rather than hurt, the careers of junior bankers.

Kerry Blum, a partner at Goldman Sachs, said in an interview with the Financial Times published earlier this month that AI will “really improve the quality of the work that our junior people are doing.”

“They’re going to get to do high-impact work while they’re learning from the AI assistant or while the AI assistant is doing other things to help them,” Blum, the global head of the equity-structuring group within private wealth management at Goldman Sachs, said.

“I know if I was an intern or an analyst, I would be a top user of the assistant tool right now,” she added.

The rise of AI has fueled concerns that it could disrupt the job market by eliminating jobs. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in an interview with Axios that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs in the next five years.

Jeremy Barnum, the chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase, told investors at the company’s annual presentation in May that AI would make the bank more efficient.

Barnum said his colleagues shared that they found AI to be useful, and it has helped them “quite a bit too with their efficiency.”

“It’s not just the amateurs who are helped by these tools. It’s amazing stuff, and we have high hopes for the efficiency gain,” he added.