Singapore’s largest bank, DBS, has recently announced the elimination of 4,000 jobs worldwide over the next three years, citing the adoption of Artificial Intelligence in banking functions. According to a DBS spokesperson, “the reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition”, instead of a one-time layoff.
This is only the latest in a string of downsizing announcements in Singapore — from Singapore Post (SingPost) to companies in the technology and financial services sectors, many organisations are doing this for a variety of reasons.
SingPost is laying off 45 people in a restructuring exercise. In the banking sector, HSBC, which has a Singapore division, is slashing jobs in its global workforce. The Business Times reported this Monday that global job cuts across Meta (parent company of Facebook) platforms had “also hit Singapore”. Similarly TikTok fired at least “a dozen” employees in Singapore within the past week, added the report.
These 2025 layoffs were preceded by the October 2024 shock layoffs in the Singapore operations of Dyson. As per reports, this was done so “discreetly” that the actual number of jobs lost in Singapore was not clear. Dyson, a Singaporean-British entity well-known for its advanced appliances, fired around 1,000 people in its United Kingdom operations alone.
In this global context, the planned job cuts at DBS may not be categorised under direct “layoffs”; reports indicate that the jobs will wither away as Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption increases within banking operations.
BBC quoted a DBS spokesperson as saying, “Over the next three years, we envisage that AI could reduce the need to renew about 4,000 temporary/contract staff across our 19 markets working on specific projects. As such, we expect the reduction in workforce will come from natural attrition as these temporary and contract roles are completed over the next few years.”
Advancements in Artificial Intelligence and their business applications are also the reason why US-based software company Salesforce plans to cut 1,000-odd roles from its workforce.
New jobs will emerge in the field of Artificial Intelligence
Even as companies replace human employees with Artificial Intelligence, validating fears of “AI will take our jobs”, new jobs are being created in the field of Artificial Intelligence itself.
The BBC report on DBS said: “The bank’s outgoing chief executive Piyush Gupta also said it expected to create around 1,000 new AI-related jobs.”
Piyush Gupta, who will be succeeded by Tan Su Shan as the DBS Group CEO on March 28, was quoted in the report as saying that DBS had spent a decade on developing the bank’s Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
“We today deploy over 800 AI models across 350 use cases, and expect the measured economic impact of these to exceed SGD 1 billion (USD 745 million; GBP 592 million) in 2025,” said Gupta.
Not only DBS, but also a multitude of companies around the world are investing in their Artificial Intelligence preparedness, making this the new growth area in the job market. Just as AI takes, it also gives.
Global market intelligence firm IDC said in an August 2024 blog report: “Worldwide spending on Artificial Intelligence (AI), including AI-enabled applications, infrastructure, and related IT and business services, will more than double by 2028 when it is expected to reach USD 632 billion, according to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide AI and Generative AI Spending Guide.’”
The IDC report said: “The industry that is expected to spend the most on AI solutions over the 2024-2028 forecast period is financial services. With banking leading the way, the financial services industry will account for more than 20 per cent of all AI spending. The next largest industries for AI spending are software and information services and retail.”
