It hasn’t been a good week for workers in the banking and financial sector. Yesterday, UK banking giant Barclays announced it was laying off 5% of its workforce, or nearly 5,000 workers, as it transitions more of the bank’s operations to artificial intelligence systems.
Across the Atlantic this morning, an American financial giant made a similar announcement.
The American Express Company (NYSE: AXP), owner of the eponymous credit card and associated financial services, announced that it will slash 5% of its workforce due to AI. Here’s what you need to know.
What’s happened?
On Friday morning, American Express CEO Stephen Squeri announced that the U.S. financial giant was eliminating 5% of its global workforce.
American Express had roughly 76,800 employees at the end of 2025, so a 5% reduction equates to about 3,840 job losses.
Amex confirmed the layoffs to Fast Company when reached for comment.
“We’ve got good momentum, but to accelerate innovation and win over the next few years, we need to become a more agile and efficient organization,” American Express CEO Steve Squeri said on a call this morning with analysts.
Squeri added: “When completed, we believe this exercise will help us operate and execute more effectively and give us greater capacity to invest in our business priorities.”
And yes, artificial intelligence is one of the facets driving the layoffs.
American Express chief financial officer Christophe Le Caillec told CNBC that the restructuring in part would help the company “to prepare for AI.”
“You don’t want to automate processes that are not optimally structured, and so what we’re doing here is to reduce layers and increase spans of controls, so that we can automate and take advantage of AI in the coming quarters and the coming years,” Le Caillec told the network.
American Express stock falls
Following the layoff news, American Express’s stock price fell—but likely not because the company announced layoffs.
Despite the harm to the individual losing their jobs, Wall Street generally cheers job cuts because they are the fastest way for companies to reduce spending and thus increase their bottom line.
The cuts were announced alongside Amex’s Q3 2026 results today. Those results saw the financial giant report record third-quarter revenue of $20.1 billion, which was up 9% year-over-year. Net income reached $3.7 billion, up from $2.9 billion a year earlier.
Yet the company’s stock price is currently trading down around 3% in early morning trading, likely related to a general fall in markets as Brent crude reaches a six-month high amid the ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran.
Year to date, AXP has now fallen around 13%.
As Fast Company reported yesterday, Barclays—and now American Express—are not the only banking giants that have cut jobs in 2026.
Both Citigroup and HSBC cut 10% of their workforces earlier this year. Standard Chartered said it will cut 15% of its workforce by 2030.