Swedbank job cuts: about 500 jobs go across the group, and its Baltic chief says AI could mean more layoffs once tokens cost less than people

Swedbank is cutting about 500 jobs across the group, including around 100 in Estonia and the other Baltic states, and its Baltic chief executive Olavi Lepp told ERR News that AI could lead to further layoffs. Lepp did not put the current job cuts on AI. He said they follow a general restructuring: the bank invested heavily in IT development and data modelling during a period of very high profitability, some of those aims have been met, and "today, when profitability is at normal levels, we do not need as many people." Staff are being offered retraining, but "this does not suit everyone and, unfortunately, layoffs are also needed." On AI he was blunt. Swedbank is testing AI in more than 90 applications across the group, and a company implementing it has to make a standard cost comparison: if using tokens is cheaper than employing people, layoffs or retraining will probably follow. "When it comes to tasks governed by fairly formal logic, the capabilities of artificial intelligence are certainly much greater than those of humans in a great many cases," he said. For Estonia, he said, the main aim is to do more business with the same number of people. He also questioned what AI will cost once its providers charge "the proper price" for licences and tokens. Because Swedbank does not attribute these 500 job cuts to AI, they are not counted as AI job losses in the tracker.