Do not think about chatbots. Do not think about AI (pick any ChatGPT etc) writing an email or summarizing a meeting.
That is not the real threat.
The real threat is the dozen projects happening behind the scenes that are automating back-office work. Every major consulting company now has platforms for this. They are clunky today, but they are getting better every day.
The question is: what parts of your job can be broken into steps, stitched together, checked by another system, and handed off to an AI agent?
Not every job. Not every task. Not everything a person does in a day.
But the hard parts? The repetitive parts? The parts where you pull data from one system, compare it to another system, create a report, update a case, send a message, escalate an exception, review a document, check a policy, validate a form, summarize an issue, route a request?
That is exactly what they are building.
And it works.
It does not have to be perfect. It only has to remove enough work to reduce headcount. Then humans become reviewers, exception handlers, and cleanup crews. Then the AI gets better. Then the exceptions get smaller. Then the human layer gets thinner.
My guess: we have about 2 years before this starts rolling out more visibly. Around 5 years for a serious ramp. In 10 years, anything in banking that can be automated will be automated.
Every single company in our industry is looking at this. Every single one.