Half of banking jobs and branches could be scrapped in the next 10 years as smaller start-up firms take on traditional lenders, according to a former bank chief executive. Big lenders will struggle to keep up with technological change, former Barclays boss Antony Jenkins said. For Barclays that would mean the loss of 66,000 jobs globally and 700 UK branches. Mr Jenkins added that high pay for bankers was coming to an end. "The number of branches and people employed in the financial services sector may decline by as much as 50% over the next 10 years, and even in a less harsh scenario I predict they will decline by at least 20%," Mr Jenkins said in a speech. Mr Jenkins was implementing a cost-cutting drive at Barclays, involving the loss of thousands of jobs, when he was fired in the summer. He described finance as getting close to an "Uber moment", referring to the taxi firm which is causing disruption among traditional private hire firms. Technology was "an unstoppable force", he said in the speech. A large amount of capital is being invested in the new firms, he said, and they could soon become household names among their customers. What is stopping the very fast changes seen in industries such as taxi hire are regulation and other hurdles, which limit new entrants into finance. So far finance hasn't had much tech, Mr Jenkins said in his speech. We are at "fintech 1.0" and we are about to hit "fintech 2.0", he said. Because of the drop in staff numbers, the challenge will be to find new ways of employing people displaced plus replacing revenue, he added. When asked (by me) whether he was "too nice" to run a bank, he said none of his colleagues had ever described him as too nice. But, he thinks he did move the needle on values and ethics and stuck to his position that the bank's reputational issues are the work of the few not the many. "The barriers to entry are quite high in financial services, so that will allow the incumbents to probably last longer than in many other industries." "The risk is that incumbents will be pushed into this utility, capital-heavy role that we've seen in other industries like telecoms. Ultimately, that will become intolerable to shareholders, so we could see consolidation and mergers," he said. The days of high pay in banking may also be numbered, he said. "If banks want to really compete for talent successfully, they are going to have to make themselves interesting places to work. It can't just be about the money, because frankly the money isn't going to be there the way it was before 2008."
Former Barclays chief executive, Antony Jenkins , has said that 700 of all banking jobs and branches could be gone within the next 10 years , due to the impact of smaller competitors entering financial services; at Barclays alone, that would result in a loss of 66,000 UK branches, and half jobs globally. He said that the big banks will struggle to keep up with the pace of technological change, which is being driven by new entrants to the market. The impact of these changes will also mean an end to the high pay that bankers currently receive. He described the precarious state of the UK banking system, in light of these imminent changes, as being close to its "Uber moment".