Major UK bank Lloyds Banking Group has announced a push to increase its AI roles by 1,000, as the company plans to hire an additional 300 staff to account for the growth.
The bank said that it was looking to hire the 300 workers by September, to help develop and use its agentic AI technology.
While it seems that Lloyds would be one of the few increasing its human workforce while delving into AI, the group did not declare that job cuts would not occur later as the AI becomes more capable.
You’re out of free articles for this month
To continue reading the rest of this article, please log in.
“AI will reshape how organisations are structured. It will change roles and how we work, and we are investing in training for colleagues through that transition,” said Lloyds group head of data, Trystan Davies.
Lloyds chief executive Charline Nunn, who announced the AI plan and need for additional staff, said back in January that the bank would need to “reduce some jobs in some areas” as a result of AI, a move that banks around the world are also acting on.
Davies that the AI will be deployed in a number of areas, including the identification and mitigation of fraud and scams, another move that other banks are looking to achieve.
Other staff will be looking at how AI could be used for internal processes, such as searching HR documents.
However, a key focus of the AI will be improving the banking process, allowing customers to speak with agentic bots about their finances, such as investments vs savings and what products are best suited to them.
“It results in a much better customer experience because our systems are kind of geared up in the right way,” Davies added.
Already, OpenAI and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia have or are launching AI tools that allow customers to seek financial advice. However, experts have warned against handing over banking details to companies so that the AI can provide said advice.
OpenAI partnered with Plaid for its financial advice bot, which requires users to link their bank accounts to the service.
However, just prior to the partnership, Plaid revealed a cyber incident that occurred almost two years earlier, which resulted in user data being exposed.
The incident, which occurred in December 2024, was only recently discovered in April 2026. The disclosure on the Maine Attorney General’s website found that the incident impacted 294 people, with the only description of the breach being “inadvertent disclosure”.
In a letter to those impacted, Plaid said it conducted an investigation, which determined that the incident was not a cyber attack, but an internal technical issue related to phone number recycling.
“The company conducted a thorough investigation and determined the issue stemmed from a phone carrier practice called number ‘recycling’ – when a mobile carrier reassigns a disconnected phone number to a new person. The investigation identified that, in rare cases, this may have resulted in a mismatch of some Plaid accounts tied to those phone numbers,” the notice said.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make Cyber Daily a preferred news source on Google.
Daniel Croft
Born in the heart of Western Sydney, Daniel Croft is a passionate journalist with an understanding for and experience writing in the technology space. Having studied at Macquarie University, he joined Momentum Media in 2022, writing across a number of publications including Australian Aviation, Cyber Security Connect and Defence Connect. Outside of writing, Daniel has a keen interest in music, and spends his time playing in bands around Sydney.