The fear that artificial intelligence (AI) will hollow out the workforce has dominated corporate boardrooms and business headlines for years, and gathered pace in early 2026. But one of banking’s most influential talent executives says the math actually points in the opposite direction — and she has the numbers to prove it.
Tanuj Kapilashrami, chief strategy and talent officer at Standard Chartered, told McKinsey in a recent interview that the global bank calculated roughly $49,000 in savings per employee reskilled and redeployed internally, compared with sourcing the same skill set through external hiring. Multiply that figure across the hundreds of roles the bank forecast would be transformed by automation and emerging technologies, and the cumulative figure, in Kapilashrami’s words, “was a staggering number.”
