The report said the changes are part of a wider drive to embed AI in the organisation.

(Updates with bank comments, background, share price, private bank and Oxford Risk  comment.)

HSBC intends to make large job cuts across its UK wealth management business, including what media reports said was a sharp reduction in financial advisors and specialist staff, as the UK/Hong Kong-listed group integrates AI.

The Financial Times reported today that the move was being planned.

A spokesperson for the bank told WealthBriefing, when asked, that private banking is not affected by the changes. This is an area that the bank recently discussed with this news service in an interview. 

“HSBC UK is a long-established, leading UK wealth manager and premium banking provider. We’re continuing to evolve to deliver more digitally-enabled products and journeys, to support our best-in-class wealth service and meet the changing needs of our customers," the bank said. HSBC did not comment on the specifics of the job cuts story.

The FT said HSBC plans to cut about half of management and specialist roles in the business, while cuts among financial advisors could reach around 70 per cent. The report cited unnamed sources familiar with the plans. The report noted that the bank did not disclose how many people work in the UK wealth business.

The report, if it is confirmed, will add to a sense that HSBC and other banks are feeling the impact of AI throughout their business, including the wealth management area. Use cases include eliminating certain administrative chores by relationship managers ahead of and after meetings, speedier know-your-client background checks during onboarding; more personalised client reporting, goal-setting, and more.  

HSBC is due to report financial results on 27 October. In its second-quarter and half-year 2026 financial results, the bank said it was on track to deliver year-on-year growth in operating costs of about 1 per cent in 2026 on a target basis. Shares are up about 20 per cent since the start of 2026. This morning, they were down around 2.7 per cent from the open in London trading time.

WealthBriefing understands that the bank is consulting on changes.

Advice quality
A question emerging from the HSBC story is whether AI can improve AI advice as well as make it cheaper, Greg B Davies, chief behavioural scientist at Oxford Risk, a firm that focuses on areas such as behavioural finance, said in a note.

"There's enormous potential here. Good automation can make advice more consistent, reducing the noise and biases that inevitably arise from human judgement. It can take care of tasks humans are inefficient at, freeing up valuable advisor time for the situations that genuinely need it," Davies said. "And it can transform advice from something delivered periodically into a much more continuous, dynamic and personalised service.

"But the hardest part of financial advice has never been producing a sensible portfolio recommendation. It's helping people make good financial decisions in the first place, and then stick with them. That means understanding their anxieties, confidence, knowledge, emotional responses to risk and changing circumstances. Sometimes the right intervention is encouragement to invest; sometimes it's reassurance to stay invested; and sometimes it's recognising that circumstances have changed and a different course of action is needed," he said. 

"The real test of HSBC's strategy won't be how many advisors it can do without. It will be whether its customers make better decisions, invest appropriately, remain invested when they should, and get human support when they need it," he added.