Deutsche Bank to make a 'big number' of staff redundant as it looks to an automated future

Deutsche Bank's chief executive, John Cryan announced on Wednesday that a "big number" of its staff would inevitably be replaced by robots as the firm looked to embrace the "revolutionary spirit" moving forward.

Cryan told his audience at the Handelsblatt banking conference in Frankfurt that the days of accountants and bankers acting like "abacuses" would soon come to an end, noting that, "in our banks, we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things, tomorrow we're going to have robots behaving like people."

"We have to find new ways of employing people and maybe people need to find new ways of spending their time," he said. "The truthful answer is we won't need as many people."

The CEO did not give any indication as to how many of the 100,000 people Deutsche employ globally he intended to replace with automated technologies but did note it would be a "big number."

"We need to admit that what we had is nice but it's not necessarily for the future," he added. "We need more revolutionary spirit."

A 2016 report by the World Economic Forum titled 'The Future of Jobs' said that automation would lead to a loss of as many as 5m jobs in 15 developed and emerging economies by 2020.

Certain roles in the finance industry and the wider jobs market had already been adversely affected by the rise of "robo-advisors" and data entry software.