Asked if rising productivity without shorter hours simply replaces manual labour with cognitive fatigue, Amanda highlights how saved time is being reinvested.
Speaking to FinTech Magazine, she says: “The early productivity gains of AI are real but how those gains will be distributed over the long term is yet to be fully determined.
“What is reassuring from these findings is that when we asked professionals what they had done with the time AI has saved them, the most common answer was that they had spent more time on what they consider higher-value work.
“This was followed closely by a reduction in time spent on routine or administrative tasks. That direction of travel is encouraging and suggests evidence of professionals moving into work that demands more human judgement and expertise, not less.”
Cybercrime fears eclipse job losses
Despite ongoing public debates about automation replacing workers, job displacement ranks among the lowest of concerns for London finance professionals.
When asked to select their top three concerns regarding AI, the loss of entry-level and graduate roles was one of the least selected options.
Only 30% of professionals chose graduate role displacement as a major concern. By comparison, 45% of respondents selected AI-enabled cyberattacks and financial crime as their primary concern.
This confidence stems from the understanding that AI removes the friction of manual research but cannot replace human accountability.
Amanda says: “As AI handles more of the information retrieval and synthesis, where humans commit their time shifts from performing the manual research to acting as the ultimate arbiter. Any government plan for AI adoption in financial services needs to account for that.”
