Wells Fargo CEO Sees AI Impacting Companies’ Workforce Decisions

Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said that artificial intelligence is already making parts of the bank significantly more efficient and will increasingly factor into how companies decide on staffing levels and job design.​

What Scharf said

Scharf described AI as a “significant opportunity” to improve efficiency and explicitly linked it to future headcount decisions, saying it will influence how many people companies need and where they are deployed. He stressed that AI will not completely replace humans, but it will change how work is done and allow firms to do more with the same or fewer employees.​

Current AI use at Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo has deployed generative AI tools to its engineering teams, which Scharf said have made software coding about 30% to 35% more efficient. He noted that the bank has not yet cut coding jobs as a result, but those teams are now able to complete substantially more work with the same number of people.​

Implications for jobs and headcount

Scharf indicated that as AI-driven efficiency gains spread, Wells Fargo expects its overall workforce to shrink over time, with some reductions already planned and higher severance costs anticipated. He has also argued more broadly that any executive claiming AI will not reduce headcount is “not being totally honest,” underscoring his view that job counts across the industry will trend lower as AI is adopted.​

Areas AI is changing work

Beyond engineering, Scharf and the bank have highlighted AI applications in tasks like compliance reviews, legal work, call-center interactions, and preparation of banking documents and pitch materials. Wells Fargo has trained tens of thousands of employees on AI tools and is rolling them out across more than 180,000 desktops as part of a gradual, multi-year transformation of how work is organized.​

How Wells Fargo frames the shift

The bank is positioning AI as a “positive reality” that boosts productivity and competitiveness, even as it acknowledges that some roles will disappear or be redesigned. Leadership has emphasized combining AI with human staff to increase capacity and reduce bureaucracy, rather than presenting it solely as a cost-cutting tool.​