Mizuho Financial Group made public last Saturday its decision to get rid of 19,000 jobs before 2027, a move made by the financial institution within a larger plan to cut its workforce up to two-third of its current level.

After Sweden, it is now the turn of Japan to announce a wave of job cuts in the banking industry. Together with Mizuho FG, two other Japanese megabanks, Sumitomo Mitsui and Mitsubishi UFJ, are also aligned with the strategic shift of Mizuho. These plans results in a total of job cuts that amounts to 33,000.

Implementation of new technologies such as robots and AI is at the root of this issue soon to become global, as banks are looking into innovative ways to cut costs and boost their profit models. Mizuho Group has developed a robot able to welcome and direct customers at the bank’s branches, which, if implemented, would threaten some of the customer relationship oriented functions. This risk for the industry professional does not only concern branch employees, as other functions such as trading are getting changed by innovation.

Several digital innovations are also poised to impact under little time the human resources structure of banks as we know it today. To up skill thus becomes a key issue for banking workers, as we see a rise of courses meant to adapt talent in the financial industry to the current shift.

Some banks, such as ING Belgium, adopt novel strategies to counter the negative aspect of digitisation, and put the emphasis on the importance of human contact and a banking flavored with a ‘home-like’ feeling.